IDEA AND ESSENCE 

IN THE PHILOSOPHIES OF HOBBES 
AND SPINOZA 



BY 

ALBERT G. A. BALZ 



Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for 

the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty 

of Philosophy, Columbia University 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1918 



^-1 






k^ 



IDEA AND ESSENCE 

IN THE PHILOSOPHIES OF HOBBES 
AND SPINOZA 



BY 

ALBERT G. A. BALZ 



Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for 

the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty 

of Philosophy, Columbia University 




COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1918 






Copyright, 191 8 
By COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 



Printed from type, January, 191 8 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction . . - I 

Part I. Hobbes 9 

Part II. Spinoza 26 

Conclusion 78 

Vita 87 



IDEA AND ESSENCE IN THE PHILOSOPHIES OF 
HOBBES AND SPINOZA 

INTRODUCTION 

It might appear presumptuous to assert that Hobbes and Spinoza 
have been persistently misunderstood, were not the results of present- 
day investigations into the history of philosophy affording a continual 
justification of a mistrust of our histories of philosophies as commonly 
written. Some one has said that most exegesis is really eisegesis — 
and Hobbes and Spinoza have suffered from a habit of reading into 
their words meanings foreign to their thought. When a contemporary 
writer translates Hobbes's "phantasm" into "state of consciousness," 
or extols Spinoza as the first great expositor, if not the originator, of 
psychophysical parallelism, a belief in the frequent misinterpretation 
of their doctrines is sharpened. The most persistent misrepresenta- 
tions of these two philosophers depend upon misreading their psychol- 
ogy or, more precisely, upon according to them a type of psychological 
doctrine which was alien to their ways of thought. We are so habitu- 
ated to a psychology of psychical, mental, or conscious states, that we 
commit the error of endowing these thinkers with a psychology simi- 
larly based upon the conception of psychical existence. The purpose of 
the following essay is to show that this conception is inapplicable to 
Hobbes and Spinoza, to indicate the misrepresentations which result 
from applying it to them, and to point out the true character of their 
teaching. 

It is a fact not without significance that psychology for a long time 
after the inception of the modern era remained an integral part of 
philosophy and that the latter differentiation of psychological from 
epistemological and even metaphysical questions was unknown to in- 
vestigations of that earlier day. A fairly definite assignment of the psy- 
chological field and the disentanglement of the problem and methods of 
psychology from those of epistemology and metaphysics are relatively 
recent achievements. We have come to look upon psychology as a dis- 
tinct science, with varying appreciation of the degree of its filiation with 
epistemology and other properly philosophical subjects. Such a dis- 
tinction was not characteristic of early modern philosophers. What we 
today would call the psychological doctrines of a Descartes or Locke, 
as distinguishable from their epistemological and metaphysical doc- 
trines, were for them inextricably bound up with the latter. The mod- 



"^^^ 



m 



2 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

em historians' separation of their epistemology from their psychology 
does not represent discriminations and classifications of which they 
were cognizant. Whatever may be the degree of interdependence of 
psychology and philosophy, it is not a negligible fact that such men as 
Locke and Descartes did not differentiate two such orders of questions, 
of standpoint, and of purpose. The latter-day philosopher may avail 
himself of psychological research in the solution of epistemological 
problems, just as he may have recourse to any or all the sciences. 
There he is utilizing the results of study in a field that he recognizes as 
distinct despite its degree of affiliation. Such a mode of thought is evi- 
dently inapplicable to a time when the relative independence of psy- 
chology had not- been achieved. 

Several interesting considerations, consequently, confront the stu- 
dent of historical systems. In the first place, since philosophy repre- 
sents the matrix from and in which psychology developed through a 
long period, this latter science, even in its present relative indepen- 
dence, rests upon old metaphysical and epistemological notions that 
have persisted in more or less attenuated form throughout the trans- 
formations of psychology itself. Early modern "psychological" inves- 
tigations were most often initiated under the auspices of what we to- 
day would regard as an irrelevant metaphysics, in hoped-for substan- 
tiation of antecedent philosophical doctrines; and such psychology 
naturally developed in the directions assigned to it by impelling inter- 
ests which to-day would be regarded as extraneous and falsifying. Psy- 
chological doctrine was thus often shaped by metaphysical, epistemo- 
logical, ethical, and even religious needs and purposes. The character 
of psychology, when it began to assert its independence, was de- 
termined by the character of its heredity. Inevitably it carried over, 
generally without deliberate recognition, a number of fundamental pre- 
suppositions and the general outlook of certain influential philosophies. 
Its terminology, since it was derived in the main from philosophical 
sources, continued to have the implications and connotations of the 
terms in general usage in the doctrines that represent the commence- 
ment of modern psychology. As a result, in modern psychological 
terminology there linger the traces of meanings which the terms 
properly possessed only in the setting of the historical systems wherein 
their signification was fixed. 

The chief of these inherited doctrines in our psychology is the theory 
of the duality of existence. On the one hand, we find, there is a field 
of existence which is psychical and immaterial; on the other hand, 
there is a field which is physical and material. The attributes that de- 
fine the two fields are related as logical contradictories. The immate- 
rial, psychical order of existence is the truly ^psychological' realm; it 
is the order of mental states, of psychoses, of states of consciousness or, 



INTRODUCTION 3 

in more emotional language, of soul and spirit. The other order of ex- 
istence comprises the bodily, the physical, the physiological, and the 
material. All existence is then matter and physical changes, including 
neuroses; and soul, spirit, or consciousness, including the series of 
psychoses. This doctrine of the duality of existence forms a presuppo- 
sition and a point of departure for most of our psychological teaching, 
and the results of research are formulated in terms of the doctrine. It 
is generally accepted as a postulate. Or if the doctrine be expressly re- 
jected as foreign to the science, it creeps into results surreptitiously 
through the well-nigh unavoidable connotations of terms which derive 
their import from the doctrine or from the philosophical sources 
wherein the doctrine itself originated. 

For this reason our psychology has been in the main a science of men- 
tal states. The customary definitions of psychology as the science of 
mental or conscious states are the natural result of the view that exis- 
tence is dual. More recent definitions of psychology, in which conduct 
or behavior, rather than mind or consciousness, is the defining term, 
apparently promise freedom from the assumptions involved in other 
definitions. In the end, however, the promise is seldom fulfilled, for 
the dualistic doctrine reappears in circuitous ways, as indicated by the 
resurgence of problems that the new standpoint was designed to avoid. 

The facts of psychological observation and experiment and their ex- 
planatory formulae gravitate, accordingly, in one of two directions. 
They are either in and of a field of psychical or spiritual existence or in 
and of an opposed field of material existence. Concordantly, we 
have two sets of terms, or two sets of meanings of terms, in which 
the duality of existence persists in direct denotation or indirect con- 
notation. The manner in which a single term, such as "sensation," 
refers on occasion to either type of existence illustrates how the 
double usage perpetuates the dual view. 

The customary formulation of the duality is the principle, generally 
taken as heuristic rather than as final, of psychophysical (or psycho- 
neural) parallelism. To a strict parallelist, the dual character of exis- 
tence is ineluctable. If he wishes to be metaphysical, and treats the 
parallelism as fact and not as an expedient postulate, he may seek the 
unification of the two series of existents by reducing them to contrasted 
manifestations or appearances of one underlying reality. The inter- 
actionist opposes the parallelist, not primiarily by denying the duality 
of existence, but by asserting the possibility of reciprocal influence be- 
tween the two fields. Both schools really maintain the same tenet of 
the incommensurability of the psychical and the physical. 

It will hardly be doubted that our psychology — and one might ven- 
ture to add, common sense — derives its dualistic constitution from the 
circumstances of its history. It is rooted in a lengthy philosophical 



4 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

tradition. But historical systems are many, and not all of them par- 
ticipate in the conceptions which became the guides of the growth of 
psychology. There is consequently the danger of an erroneous ex- 
pounding of historical systems through the indiscriminate transference 
of the tenor and significations of our own psychology to the words of 
our predecessors. Because of this we are led to attribute to philosophies 
of widely differing purport a resemblance they do not really possess, 
and to the succession of doctrines a filiation of meaning that is foreign 
to it. 

As has been asserted, Hobbes and Spinoza particularly have suffered 
from such misapprehensions. The misrepresentation of their meaning 
rests essentially upon the introduction into their psychology of that 
dual view of existence which is characteristic of modern psychology. 
From this distortion of their psychological tenets there ensues a correla- 
tive distortion of their epistemological and metaphysical opinions. 
When we have equated the mental, the spiritual, the conscious, and 
the psychical, or have taken these terms as referring to a single spiritual 
principle or substance, and from this equation have derived the content 
for the Hobbeistic and Spinozistic phraseology, we have started our 
study of their systems with the assumption that the notion of existence 
as dual is, either obscurely or patently, a regulative force in their 
philosophies. 

With respect to Hobbes, it may be asserted that the failure to com- 
prehend him begins with the attempt to square his thought and termi- 
nology with the later distinction between epistemology and psychology. 
In one sense, Hobbes may be said to have had no "psychology" at all. 
What we call psychological facts were to him a part of the subject-mat- 
ter of physics, and in no essential way different from the rest of that 
subject-matter. The peculiar character of the problems and stand- 
point, implied in our minds by the notion of psychology as a distinct 
science, was beyond his ken. If we should think of all "psychology" as 
nothing but physiology, and of physiology as a branch of physics, sub- 
servient to the latter's laws, illustrative of its principles, and happening 
to be concerned with the activities of a living organism, we would be 
near the view-point of Hobbes. His metaphysics is in the main physics, 
and his "psychology" a study of certain physical facts that happen to 
be of peculiar importance because the knower is a sentient organism. 
The name "psychology," in so far as it connotes a science established on 
the foundations of psychophysical parallelism or whose field of investi- 
gations is wholly or even partly the psychical, is improperly applied to 
the teachings of Hobbes. When the word is divested of these connota- 
tions, we are, of course, at liberty to speak of Hobbes's psychology. 

Hobbes's philosophy, therefore, has no concern with mental states in 
so far as the phrase signifies conscious processes in a psychical realm of 



INTRODUCTION 5 

existence. Hobbes is no more concerned with mental or spiritual enti- 
ties or states than the modern physicist. His devotion to the rising me- 
chanical natural philosophy brought psychological facts within the 
sphere of a dynamics of nature, rather than relegated them to a sepa- 
rate realm. This statement the treatment of Hobbes will substantiate. 

Spinoza, to a greater extent than Hobbes, is customarily miscon- 
strued, and for much the same reason. Certain peculiarities of expres- 
sion favor an incorrect rendering of his theory when his writings are 
approached, as generally happens, with the conception of a duality of 
existence in mind. The common approach is to pass from the dualisms 
of Descartes to Spinoza as to one self-appointed for the task of the 
unification of the dualisms. As with Hobbes, the most common fail- 
ures to apprehend Spinoza's doctrine originate in the fallacy of ascrib- 
ing to his thought the notion of psychical existence as one of its leading 
elements. The doctrine of attributes, the series of ideas in thought and 
of things in nature, are readily turned into psychophysical parallelism 
by interpreting the attribute of thought as defining spiritual existence 
(after analogy with the finite thinking substance of Descartes) and 
ideas as signifying psychical elements of existence, the series of which 
constitute the thought attribute. We have then a series of psychical 
thought existents opposed to a material and physical order of existents. 
The consequence is that there are two fields of existence, and their in- 
commensurability follows from the contradictoriness of their predi- 
cates. Spinoza's dictum concerning the order and connection of ideas 
as the same as the order and connection of things is accordingly hailed 
as an explicit formulation of psychophysical parallelism. 

One of the purposes of the following essay is to demonstrate the 
untenability of these several constructions. But at the very outset, a 
verbal obstacle must be circumvented. The misinterpretations of 
Hobbes and Spinoza, it is maintained, originate in that assumption of 
two separate fields or kinds of existence which comes to be implied by so 
many philosophical terms. From the negative side, the thesis of this 
essay is an insistence that the notion of spiritual substance and the con- 
ceptions derived therefrom must be eradicated from any interpretation 
of Hobbes and Spinoza which is to be adequate and exact. But in 
making this insistence it is verbally difficult to avoid translating the 
writer's discontent with the misconstructions just outlined into terms 
of a reaction by Hobbes and Spinoza themselves against the notion of 
dual existence and its derivatives. The danger is that in a furtive man- 
ner our philosophers will be represented as consciously recognizing a 
dualistic position as the antithesis of their own doctrines, against which 
they were in deliberate revolt, and the overthrow of which constituted 
a strong motive for the development of their own thought. One design- 
ing to furnish an exposition of Hobbes's and Spinoza's doctrines that 



6 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

will reveal the untenability of expositions that begin with dualisms of 
substance or existence, faces the somewhat delicate task of escaping the 
presentation of Hobbes and Spinoza as themselves essentially interested 
in combating such dualisms, and as propounding their systems in refu- 
tation of notions concerning spiritual substance and existence as dual. 

The point is that a dualism of substances, or of body and soul, or of 
existence (Cartesian or otherwise), can not justly be exhibited as the 
point of departure for these two philosophies. The temper of the two 
systems does not own an active antagonism to these dualistic tenets 
as the animating agency that quickened the thought of the two men 
into vigorous life. The impelling influences lie otherwhere, as will 
appear in the sequel. It may, of course, be pointed out that 
Hobbes does repudiate spiritual substance, and that Spinoza asserts 
the oneness of substance. But it is more faithful to the spirit of these 
thinkers to state that the one found the conception of spiritual sub- 
stance to be at variance with his own position and foreign to its char- 
acter, and, therefore, dismissed it as a superstition, while the other 
started with certain convictions of the oneness of substance and its 
nature, and consequently was indifferent to and generally neglectful of 
whatever dualistic or pluralistic beliefs came under his survey. This is 
historically more authentic, and as interpretation more scrupulous, 
than to see in the notions of spiritual substance and of the dual char- 
acter of existence the great ideas against which Hobbes and Spinoza 
reacted, and in the rebound from which they were led to their several 
speculations. The picture of Hobbes as rebelling against Descartes's 
dualism, and of Spinoza as coming to relinquish it as untenable, which, 
without this precautionary warning, this essay might be regarded as 
presenting, may color the relations of the three with a certain attractive 
consecutiveness, but it would scarcely be historical. Such consecutive- 
ness is more apparent than real and exact. 

There is a different way of stating the point. It is hardly possible to 
avoid using the terms "physical," "material," and the like in a treatment 
of Hobbes and Spinoza. Such terms, however, are to most readers 
freighted with connotations of two contrasted orders of existence, and 
an effort is required to strip them of such implications. Now it is main- 
tained that the significance and content of such terms when used by 
Hobbes and Spinoza, are not derived from a contrast between sub- 
stances, or between body and mind, or between types of existence. The 
words are not loaded with such allusions, and when used in expounding 
the two philosophies must be deprived of them. And so the writer 
wishes to make clear that in using these terms there is no intention of 
attributing to the two thinkers any such latent meanings. To guard 
against this the words will generally be inclosed within quotation 
marks. Whatever reaction against these ideas is involved in the expo- 



INTRODUCTION 7 

sition which follows is directed against such implications as are fre- 
quently conveyed in orthodox accounts of these philosophers. The 
negative side of the thesis to be presented refers to what the writer con- 
ceives to be such misinterpretations. 

The thesis advanced has a negative and a positive aspect. The nega- 
tive side consists in a denial that either philosopher was actuated by 
the conception of existence as dual, or that the notion of the "psychi- 
cal" or "spiritual" played an influential r61e in their speculations. 
Neither thinker conceived of idea or of thought as a "psychical" or 
"spiritual" entity, state, or process. The problems, consequently, of 
relating two opposed fields of existence and of demonstrating the corre- 
spondence in cognition of "immaterial" soul states or ideas to "mate- 
rial" changes in another sphere of existence do not arise as genuine 
problems in their systems. 

The positive side of the thesis may be rendered as follows: First, 
it is maintained that Hobbes and Spinoza conceived of existence as 
one, and that this order of existence is, as we should say, the "physical." 
Existence is just existence, nature, the field of physical science, of 
"natural philosophy." Both men are content to take existence and 
nature as it is described by science. This is the metaphysical position. 
Secondly, with reference to psychological doctrine, it is asserted that 
with both investigators psychology is purely physiological in character. 
"Psychological" facts are to them just exactly what they turn out to be 
as physiological functions or processes — and they are just that and 
nothing more. Their psychology is a doctrine of the operation of the 
animal spirits, or in more recent phraseology, of processes in the ner- 
vous system. For Hobbes, what we should call "mental states" are 
physical effects; and Spinoza's opinions are essentially in agreement 
with those of Hobbes. Their respective psychologies are to them parts 
of physics; for them the distinctions between physics, physiology, and 
"psychology" are matters of expedience, implying no ultimate and 
irreducible diversity in the nature of the phenomena to be investigated. 

The last element of the thesis concerns the epistemological teachings 
connected with such metaphysical and psychological views. With re- 
spect to Hobbes, the brain state is related to extra-organic object as 
effect to cause. This relation affords us knowledge of probability, 
unscientific or conjectural knowledge. Scientific or genuine knowledge 
depends upon the signification and use of the terms of discourse. 

With regard to Spinoza, it is maintained that by "idea" in the episte- 
mological sense he means logical essence. In so far as there is a 
"psychological" account of the idea and of thinking, ideas and thinking 
are explained in physiological terms as truly as the phantasm in 
Hobbes's teaching. With reference to knowledge the term "idea" sig- 
nifies a logical entity, the pure concept. It is a truth. Spinoza's classi- 



8 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

fication of ideas is logical, not psychological. All "things," happenings, 
events, are "physical." The correspondence of the order and connec- 
tion of ideas with the order and connection of things is, therefore, a 
harmony of ideas or the logical truths of things as deductively ordered 
and systematized about and under the concept of substance, with the 
system of events that makes up all existence or nature. In short, his 
basic principle is that the coherent logical system of concepts corre- 
sponds to the orderly system of nature. 



PART I 

HOBBES 

The general revolt against scholasticism assumed too many forms to 
enable one to summarize it in a phrase. In some quarter or other re- 
actions against every element of the doctrine of the school occurred. 
The movement towards the inductive and experimental investigation 
of nature, of which Francis Bacon was the protagonist, was by no 
means limited to him. Moreover, this movement can not be taken as 
signalizing the whole meaning of the revolt. The rebellion had its 
religious, moral, metaphysical, artistic, and political, as well as "scien- 
tific," moments. Only as a very general transformation of view- 
point, of desire, purpose, and insight, can the new currents of thought 
be called one. 

Thomas Hobbes affords an interesting example of participation in a 
common dissatisfaction and repudiation of the scholastic standpoint 
with striking divergences from the philosophical endeavors of other 
prophets of the new era. Hobbes's intimacy with Bacon suggests the 
picture of a relation of master and follower between them, but such a 
picture is assuredly misleading. Toennies ^ and Robertson ^ both ob- 
ject to such a depiction of the relationship of the two men. The true 
intellectual progenitor of Hobbes is Galileo. Galileo had destroyed 
the medieval concept of purpose as a category applicable to nature. 
The conception of nature as a system of mechanical forces measurable 
in terms of mathematics took captive the imagination of Hobbes, and 
was at least instrumental in the clarification of his thought, if it did not 
determine its course. Toennies ^ declares that the epistemological 
question of the time was whether knowledge attaining the level of the 
certainty of mathematics, of geometrical demonstration from axioms 
and definitions, was possible, and how it was possible. When Hobbes, 
relatively late in life, made the acquaintance of Euclid, it was this 
problem that was formulated in his mind. It was the natural conse- 
quence of Galileo's work. Galileo regarded mathematics as the indis- 
pensable prelude to philosophical study ^ and Hobbes shared the 
opinion. The former, according to Toennies, really inaugurated the 
age of mathematical deduction. Such deduction was to become 

* "Anmerkungen iiber die Philosophic des Hobbes," Vierieljahrsschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Philoso- 
thie, Vol. 3, 1879, PP. 459-460. 

2 "Hobbes," Blackwood's Philosophical Classic?. 
' ibid, p. 461. 

* cf. Toennies, ibid, p. 456. 



mmm 



10 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

Hobbes's ideal of method. Bacon can hardly be said to have grasped 
this epistemological problem ; and the correlative ideal of method was 
not a part of his thought. In the light of this, therefore, Bacon can not 
be regarded as the immediate forerunner of Hobbes. Seth remarks 
that Hobbes's quarrel with scholasticism "concerns the subject-matter, 
not the method, of that philosophy. He does not join in Bacon's 
protest against the scholastic habit of anticipating nature, of deducing 
facts from theories; he has no thought of substituting a scientific in- 
duction for the deductive rationalism of scholastic philosophy. So far 
as the question of method is concerned, he is the opponent rather of 
Bacon than of the schoolmen; for him science, as such, is rationalistic 
or deductive, not empirical and inductive. Rational insight, not 
empirical knowledge, is his scientific ideal." ^ 

It was, then, the teleological character of the old physics that was a 
chief point of reaction for Hobbes. The mechanistic character of the 
new physics implied a difference in procedure. In place of the older 
process of the classification of qualities, the study of nature in terms of 
quantity was inaugurated. This change in the character of physics 
literally meant the application of mathematics to nature. So that the 
new epistemological problem, the new conception of nature, and the 
geometric ideal of method are elements of one movement.® 

A detailed account of the sources and of the arising and maturing of 
Hobbes's thought is out of place here. His attitude toward the doc- 
trine of the plurality of substances and the cognitive correspondence of 
idea and object are our first concern. 

When nature is conceived as a vast mechanical system, nature is but 
one substance. But, unlike Descartes, Hobbes does not rule the 
"mind" out of nature and devise a second substance in which the mental 
life may be conceived as taking place. Human nature is a part of na- 
ture; it is a product of the san;e forces; it is regulated by the same 
laws as nature itself. The reduction of qualities to quantities applies in 
the sphere of the psychological since that is but an integral part of the 
whole physical system. Hobbes speaks, to be sure, of the "two princi- 
pal parts of man," body and mind. But no duality of substance is 
intended. Mind is defined only by an enumeration of "mental" facul- 
ties. There is but one substance, body. "The word body, in the most 
general acceptation, signifieth that which filleth, or occupieth some cer- 
tain room, or imagined place; and dependeth not on imagination, but 
is a real part of the universe. For the universe, being the aggregate of 
bodies, there is no real part- thereof that is not also body."^ Spirit, ac- 
cording to Hobbes, originally meant air, or breath, and comes to mean 

6 English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy, p. 58. 
» cf. Toennies, ibid. 

7 Works of Hobbes, Molesworth edition, 1839, Vol. 3, Leviathan, pt. 3, ch. 34; all references are to 
this edition. 



HOBBES II 

incorporeality from having originally indicated subtle body. "Matter 
is the same with body; but never without respect to a body which is 
made thereof. Form is the aggregate of all accidents together . . . 
spirit is this fluid, transparent, invisible body."^ The notion of an in- 
corporeal substance is a contradiction in terms, a vain idea induced by 
apparitions, hallucinations, and dreams. It is a sort of mental hob- 
goblin. Hobbes uses the terms "ghost" and "incorporeal substance" in 
juxtaposition, and is serious in so doing. ^ From Hobbes's objections to 
Descartes it appears that he was either unable to understand Descartes's 
notion of the immateriality of thought or, what is more probable, 
perversely refused to comprehend it. In this Gassendi resembled 
Hobbes. The notion of immateriality, at least in the sense of the imma- 
teriality or ideality of form, was a commonplace to those imbued with 
the scholasticism of the traditional education of that age. Descartes's 
soul substance represents not so much an innovation and a novel 
distinction, as a renovation of a time-honored conception, coupled 
with a more explicit comprehension of the implications of the reduc- 
tion of a plurality of substances to two. To Hobbes and Gassendi, 
archheretics of the age, Descartes appeared the victim of a great 
superstition, as bad as that of belief in occult powers. On the one 
hand, in their eyes, he was proclaiming allegiance to the new science of 
nature; on the other, he was asserting the validity of a nonsensical 
notion that was one of the rankest growths of scholasticism. 

The animus of Hobbes's strictures on the notion of incorporeal 
substance was derived not so much from a devotion to a monism of 
substance as from a conviction of the worthlessness of the concept of 
substance as such. He does, of course, speak of body substance, but 
concerning this single substance he really has little to say. At bottom, he 
is of the opinion that any and every notion of substance is vain, empty, 
and unfruitful. Its serviceableness, in so far as it has any, is in its use 
as a limiting idea. The phenomena of nature, and these include the 
phenomena of human nature, are motions. The science of nature is 
essentially the science of dynamics or mechanics — a mathematical 
quantitative investigation of the sequence of physical events. The 
new conception of nature serves, for Hobbes, all the purposes formerly 
served by the concept of substance. The thought of nature as a dynami- 
cal system is so fundamental with Hobbes that he seems well-nigh to con- 
found pure mathematics with its applied forms. The true relationship 
between mathematics and physical science is obscured in his thinking 
through the discovery that nature possesses a sort of mathematical 
structure. And it is this vision that fructifies his thought, rather than the 
notion of the oneness of substance. As has been indicated, he desired to 

8 Answer to Bishop Bramhall, Vol. 4, p. 309. 

9 De Cor pore. Vol. i, pt. 4, ch. 25, p. 399. 



12 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

give knowledge of nature the certainty of geometry. The practical identi- 
fication of geometry and mechanics raises the laws of motion to the 
rank of geometrical axioms and definitions, and mechanics, as the 
science of all nature, thereby attains, in his mind, a position comparable 
to the deductive, demonstrative certainty of geometry. ^^ Motion thus 
becomes the chief category of his thought while the concept of sub- 
stance lapses from mind. For once science as the study of motion is 
launched, the notion of body retreats from sight ; and one could properly 
say that the notion of substance takes the form of the conception of 
nature as a uniform, mechanical system. This opinion is corroborated 
by the fact that Hobbes seems at little pains to determine the nature of 
substance. Having served its purpose as a counter blast to pluralisms 
and dualisms of substances, it becomes a shadowy sort of metaphysical 
background for science. Owing to this fact, Hobbes's philosophy is 
sometimes called phenomenalistic. Space and time are phantasms. 
Accidents do not "inhere" in bodies, but are our ways of conceiving 
body. All accidents can be thought away from body, save magnitude. 
The accidents of body are phenomena of motion, and science is knowl- 
edge of these accidents. Thus natural philosophy deals with a world of 
motions and accidents, the relation of which to substance remains un- 
settled; and it so remains, probably, because Hobbes thought of the 
problem of this relation as vain and fruitless. Had he not regarded the 
notion of substance as empty, he must have raised questions concerning 
the relation of motion to substance. But in the main, questions of that 
type are left to one side. 

It is noteworthy that Hobbes's psychology is developed largely in the 
interest of physics. Of the psychology of sensation and perception, at 
least, this is true. As all psychological process is really motion, psy- 
chology is a branch of physics. A brief survey of his psychology will 
indicate this. 

The subject of sense is the sentient itself. And it is of prime impor- 
tance to observe that this "subject of sense" is neither consciousness, 
nor soul, nor mind, but, in Hobbes's own phrase, "some living creature." 
Sense is motion in the sentient. All qualities "called sensible, are in the 
object, that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, 
by which it presseth our organs diversely." ^^ These motions are propa- 
gated on into the organism. But this motion meets an "outward" mo- 
tion, and this clash of motions is sense. "Sense is a phantasm made by 
the reaction and endeavor outwards in the organ of sense caused by an 
endeavor inwards from the object, remaining for some time more or 
less." ^^ "Neither in us that are pressed, are they (qualities) anything 

1" cf. Toennies, ibid. Vol. 4, 1880, p. 69; Philosophical Elements, sect. 2 ; De Homine, ch. 10, S- 

"Vol. 3, ch. I, p. 2. 

" Concerning Body, Vol. i, pt. 4, ch. 25, p. 301, 



HOBBES 13 

else, but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion. "^^ 
In Chapter 25 of the Concerning Body, we learn that qualities are not 
accidents of the object, for light and color, for example, are merely 
phantasms of the sentient. 

How thoroughly the psychology of sensation and perception is re- 
garded by Hobbes as an integral part of physics is indicated by the fact 
that Hobbes raises the question whether there is not sensation in all 
bodies. ^^ For reaction, as well as action, characterizes all bodies, and 
sensation is a phenomenon of a type describable in such categories. 
He falls back on the fact that the human body retains the prior motion 
as a dampened but persistent organic reverberation ; and in this resides 
the possibility of memory. Or, to speak more accurately, memory, in 
Hobbes's sense of the term, is an essential part of sense. He does not 
seem, however, to offer an explanation of how the motions from sense 
persisting in subliminal form come to attain, when we remember, a 
state of excitement approximating that of the original experience. "For 
by sense, we commonly understand the judgment we make of objects 
by their phantasms; namely, by comparing and distinguishing those 
phantasms; which we could never do, if that motion in the organ, 
by which the phantasm is made, did not remain there for some time, 
and make the same phantasm return. Wherefore sense . . . hath 
necessarily some memory adhering to it." ^^ Hence the "nature of 
sense can not be placed in reaction only, "^^ but an organic continuance 
of the motion, or reverberation, must be added to the action-reaction 
scheme. Yet it is to be noted that this does not remove sense psychol- 
ogy from physics, for the persistent motion is just motion in a given 
body. Rather it means that the physics of sense deals with an added 
factor. 

Since all ideas are originally from sense, they are also motions in the 
sentient. Hobbes is loose in his use of terms, and he maintains with 
consistency no distinctions between images, representations, ideas, and 
conceptions. They are all really images. All psychological facts are 
motions or clashes of motions. Sense processes differ from ideas and 
images only in that the latter are revived motions or motions continuing 
in the absence of the object. All mental processes are at bottom of two 
kinds, either sensations (perceptions) or images. The general name for 
both kinds is "phantasm." "The imagery and representations of the 
qualities of the thing without, is that we call our conception, imagina- 
tion, ideas, notice, or knowledge of them; and the faculty or power by 
which we are capable of such knowledge, is that I here call cognitive 
power, or conceptive, the power of knowing or conceiving."^^ Imagina- 

" Vol. 3, ch. I, p. 2. 

" Concerning Body, Vol. i, p. 393. 

« ibid. 

» ibid. 

" Human Nature, Vol. 4, ch. i. 



14 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

tion is defined as "conception remaining, and little by little decaying 
from and after the act of sense." ^^ The representative image is a state 
of sense overpowered by another and later sense experience. Produc- 
tive imagination is the composition of motions in the brain. 

The phantasm is called the "act of sense." "From this reaction by 
the motions in the sentient phantasm or idea hath its being." Hobbes 
says with reference to phantasm as the act of sense, that "the being a 
doing is the same as the being done ;" ^^ he adds that "a phantasm being 
made, perception is made together with it." This seems to mean that 
the motion process, or the clash of motions, is itself the idea or percep- 
tion, the phantasm. 

Hobbes distinguishes, or seems to distinguish, between the cognitive 
or conceptive faculty and the imaginative or motive faculty. "For the 
understanding of what I mean by the power cognitive, we must re- 
member and acknowledge that there be in our minds continually certain 
images or conceptions of the things without us, . . . the absence 
or destruction of things once imagined doth not cause the absence or de- 
struction of the imagination itself. This imagery and representations of 
the qualities of the thing without, is that we call our conception, 
imagination, ideas, notice, or knowledge of them ; and the faculty or 
power by which we are capable of such knowledge, is that I here call 
cognitive power, or conceptive, the power of knowing or conceiving. "^^ 
But then Hobbes proceeds to equate obscure conception and phantasy 
or imagination, 2^ so that the distinction between the two faculties is left 
inexact. Certainly no distinction between image and conception ap- 
pears from these citations. But while Hobbes, as a matter of termi- 
nology, does not distinguish between image and conception as existences, 
he has a certain distinction in use and meaning that can be most easily 
denoted by these terms. To make this clear, it will be necessary to turn 
briefly to his idea of knowledge. 

Hobbes has in mind a knowledge system comparable to geometry in 
method and certainty. This universal system, which represents the 
ideal of knowledge, is contrasted with the particularity of sense experi- 
ence. The opposition between the universal principle in which alone 
consists true knowledge and the empirical manifold does not lead in the 
case of Hobbes to an attempt to derive knowledge from sense experi- 
ence. His problem is not stated in the form : How can we obtain from 
sense experience the organized body of universal principles? The con- 
trast between principle and particular sense experiences develops rather 
into an antithesis that runs through his theory of knowledge. The ex- 
periences of sense are, in conformity with Hobbes's mechanistic view 

"t6»d, ch. 3, I. 

"Vol. I, pt. 4. 25. P- 392. 

«<> Human Nature, Vol. 4, pp. 2-3. 

" cf. ibid, p. 9. 



HOBBES 15 

of nature, effects. They are not differentiated from other effects in 
nature because they involve a unique principle. The fact that sense 
effects happen to concern a sentient being does not signify that they 
are of an order essentially different from other sorts of effects, for the 
sentient being is an integral part of the mechanical system. Now true 
knowledge is knowledge of causes, and causes in Hobbes's system of 
knowledge are to correspond to the first principles of mathematics. 
Therefore the problem of the relation of universal principles and sense 
experience is formulated in terms of cause and effect. In consequence, 
there arises an antithesis between knowledge from causes to effects and 
knowledge from effects to causes. 

Geometry, the model that Hobbes seeks to follow, begins with 
axioms and definitions and proceeds deductively to the exposition of 
consequences. But why is geometry demonstrable? Because the 
power to construct the object of thought is in the demonstrator.^^ 
But with respect to knowledge of fact, sense experience can not give us 
general notions, universal principles, definitions, and axioms. We 
do not know the construction of things. Science, imitating geometry, 
proceeds deductively from causes, which are the axioms and first 
principles of science, to effects. Sense experience is an effect, and, 
therefore, can not in any direct fashion supply the starting-points for 
scientific knowledge. From sense effects, or from effects generally, we 
can demonstrate, not the real causes, but only possible causes, of the 
effects. So the antithesis takes the following form: on the one hand 
is scientific knowledge — the only real knowledge — proceeding from 
causes to effects and revealing necessities of connection ; on the other 
hand, we have knowledge of possible causes of real effects, and this is 
mere knowledge of probability, knowledge of experience, unscientific 
knowledge. 

Hobbes does not give a satisfactory account of how we are to obtain 
the first notions of science. If, however, he does not solve this diffi- 
culty, two things aid him in glossing it over and, perhaps, convincing 
him that he has solved it. First of all, there is that identification of 
mathematics and mechanics already referred to. By analytic proce- 
dure the primitive notions (axioms and definitions of physical science) 
are to be secured, and then, proceeding synthetically, the effects are to 
be demonstrated from their causes or first principles. The body of 
definitions, or primitive truths, thus obtained by analysis would form 
First Philosophy. 

The second recourse afforded Hobbes is language, an instrument that 
makes possible the transcendence of the limitations of experience. Rea- 
soning is computation, addition and subtraction; and judgment is the 
uniting of two names by the copula "is." The universal name is a 

*2c/. Six Lessons to the Professor of Mathematics, Vol. 7, p. 134; cf. Toennies, op. cit.. Vol. 4. 



l6 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

counter or symbol, and truth is consistency in the use of terms. The 
universal name does not represent any particular existing object, nor 
any particular image. It may indicate indifferently any individual ob- 
ject of a class, or an image of any individual object of a class. In 
short, it is a matter of no importance what image is attached to the 
name. The essential thing is that the signification of the name be 
clearly determined upon and that it be accepted. 

Now to return to the distinction of image and conception. The 
image, particularly in so far as Hobbes uses conception as termino- 
logically equivalent to image, is itself an existence, a motion in the 
sentient, a physical effect. Experience is "store of phantasms," and 
phantasms are, as existents, effects, the source of problems. The image 
is literally like the images in a mirror. The shilling, observed through 
a glass of a certain figure, is seen as twenty shillings. The shilling is a 
body — the images given by the glass are, in Hobbes's own terms, fan- 
cies, idols, mere nothings, echoes.^^ The proposition that "there is 
nothing without us (really) which we call an image or colour" is proved 
pointing out that "the image of anything by reflection in a glass of water 
or the like, is not anything in or behind the glass, or in or under the 
water." 2* 

Conceptions, in so far as they are composed of images, are like all 
other images. But conception as a name standing for a class of objects 
(or class of images) and accompanied by an image of a particular object 
of the class, means the term of discourse. What we should ordinarily 
intend by "conception" or "general idea" signifies for Hobbes symbolic 
word counters with meanings determined and agreed upon, which form 
the terms in the process of reasoning. Image and conception as psy- 
chological existents are one and the same. But with reference to 
knowledge, conception is the universal name standing for a group of 
particular empirical facts (images or sense perceptions) , and knowledge 
based upon such terms is universal, scientific knowledge; while 
knowledge based upon particular images, or trains of images, is unscien- 
tific and not of universal validity. This is clarified by a reference to 
Hobbes's Objections to Descartes. The latter has said that he does not 
understand by the imagination what the wax is, but conceives it by the 
mind alone. A distinction between image as physiological process and 
idea as an immaterial spiritual entity is thus implied. Hobbes 
objects to this as follows: "There is a great difference between imagin- 
ing, i.e., having some idea, and conceiving with the mind, i.e., in- 
ferring, as the result of a train of reasoning, that something is, or ex- 
ists. . . But what shall we now say, if reasoning chance to be 
nothing more than the uniting and stringing together of names or 

*» Decameron Physiologicum, Vol. 7, pp. 78-79. 
** Human Nature, Vol. 4, pp. 4-5. 



HOBBES 17 

designations by the word is? It will be a consequence of this that rea- 
son gives us no conclusion about the nature of things, but only about 
the terms that designate them, whether, indeed, or not there is a con- 
vention (arbitrarily made about their meanings) according to which we 
join these names together. If this be so, as is possible, reason- 
ing will depend on names, names on the imagination, and imagina- 
tion ... on the motion of the corporeal organs. Thus mind 
will be nothing but the motions in certain parts of an organic 
body."^^ "It is evident that essence in so far as it is distinguished 
from existence is nothing else than a union of names by means of the 
verb is" ^e 

In short, in terms of psychology, there is no distinction between con- 
ception and image. Words, one would suppose, are also images. But 
with reference to knowledge, conception as universal names signifying a 
class of objects or an abstract principle is in sharpest contrast to the 
particular image. While for Descartes the image is what Hobbes 
would have it be, namely, motion (or some purely physical change) in 
the sentient organism, the idea or conception is an entity in an imma- 
terial soul substance. 

Mention has been made of what has been called Hobbes's "phenom- 
enalism." In connection with the meaning of this term as applied to 
Hobbes certain questions concerning qualities arise. First of all, what 
is the "object" of perception? It is not any sense quality, or a combina- 
tion of them, and merely that. The object of sight, he says, is neither 
light nor color (which are phantasms in the sentient), but the object 
that is light or colored.^^ "The whole appearance of figure, and light 
and color is by the Greeks commonly called eidos . . . and by the 
Latins, species or imago; all which names signify no more but appear- 
ances."^^ Now subtracting from the "object" these secondary qualities, 
what remains? Motion, and in some obscure sense, body, substance. 
Consider briefly in connection with this certain aspects of Hobbes's 
account of qualities. 

The causes of sensible qualities, he says, can not be known until we 
know the causes of sense.^^ Sensible qualities from the side of the 
object are "so many several motions, pressing our organs diversely"; ^^ 
from the side of the perceiving subject, they are again "nothing but 
divers motions." ^^ Qualities are apparitions of the motions produced 
by the object on the brain; but the apparitions or images are also 
said to be "nothing really, but motion in some internal substance of the 

25 Philosophical Works of Descartes, Ross and Haldane, Vol. 2, p. 65. 

2* ibid, p. 77. 

2^ Vol. I, p. 404. 

28 ibid, pp. 404-405. 

"Vol. I, p. 72. 

'o Vol. 3. p. 2. 

" ibid. 



l8 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

head" ^^ Four propositions are advanced ^^ that should be considered 
here: "That the subject wherein colour and image are inherent, is not 
the object or thing seen. That there is nothing without us (really) which 
we call an image or colour. That the said image or colour is but an 
apparition unto us of the motion, agitation, or alteration, which the 
object worketh in the brain, or spirits . . . that as in vision, so also in 
conceptions that arise from the other senses the subject of their in- 
herence is not the object, but the sentient" 

It would appear, therefore, that the "object" reduces to motions of 
body. Secondary qualities at least depend on the organism and are in 
the organism. Hobbes's position is, then, in general, that of modern 
physics. For the physicist the given color is just so many vibrations 
per second in the medium, that is, a certain kind of motion. For 
Hobbes as physicist, the subject-matter of investigation is the various 
kinds of motion. Body is distinguished from its "appearances." Body 
as a principle beyond appearances affords a problem for metaphysics 
rather than for physics. Appearances as phenomena of motion form 
the subject-matter of physics. Body as substance ranks as a sort of 
general postulate of physical science. This seems to be, in a general 
way, the drift of Hobbes's meaning. 

To return for a moment to the psychology of perception. It is to be 
noted that while the cause of perception is the motion which is propa- 
gated through the medium into the organ of sense and then on into the 
brain, this motion is not in and by itself the sensation quality or the 
perception. The perception (sensation) arises only when the inward 
motion clashes with the outward motion or "endeavor." The "appari- 
tion" or phantasm is then not the incoming motion itself. But then we 
may ask: Is the phantasm the cZa^/? of the motions? Is the psychologi- 
cal process just this reaction upon another motion, a sort of compound 
motion resulting from the combination of the inward and outward 
motions, or is it the way in which the total motion process appears to 
the percipient? There seem to be two possible interpretations of 
Hobbes's thought : either the clash of the "endeavour inwards" and the 
"endeavour outwards" is in itself the apparition or quality; or the 
qualities depend on, but are something more than, the motion reaction in 
a nervous substance on the inward-going motion which is a continua- 
tion of the motion originating in some extra-organic source. The 
"clash" is either the apparition or sense quality itself, or that which 
appears in sense perception as the quality. 

Hobbes's own statements afford no ground for doubting that for him 
the clash of motions is itself the quality, apparition, or phantasm. Or 
in terms characteristic of his age, they are simply movements of the 

32 Human Nature, Vol. 4, ch. 7, p. i; cf. ch. 8, i, and ch. 10, x. 
*• Human Nature, Vol. 4, p. 4. 



HOBBES 19 

animal spirits, vibrations in the nerves; the only qualification is that 
they are compound movements or vibrations. The idea may be un- 
tenable, the theory superficial and neglectful of real difficulties, but it is 
Hobbes's answer. 

We may ourselves introduce the question of consciousness, in order 
thereby to indicate the unsatisfactory character of this psychology. 
But then we are injecting into the exposition of his thought an order of 
questions of which he was not cognizant or, being aware of them, simply 
neglected. Having denied the existence of incorporeal substance, he 
could not and would not regard the apparition or conception or image 
as a soul state, a spiritual event, in an immaterial soul, and correspond- 
ing to, rather than being, a physical motion. It is the result of an in- 
adequate historical perspective to raise the question of the relation of 
the "clash" of motions to "consciousness," or to make the immediate 
object of sense a "state of consciousness" in the ordinary sense of the 
term (see below). 

The source of misunderstanding is the question of what is meant by 
the "object," and to this we must return. What the object is does not 
hinge upon any question of a relation to consciousness, but upon the 
relation of the question of psychology to the question of physics. In 
terms of Hobbes's physics, which we must remember is essentially me- 
chanics, the "object" is a set of "divers motions," connected in a manner 
not wholly explained with substantial body. The accidents of body, 
for Hobbes the physicist, are those divers motions. All accidents can 
be generated or destroyed, save those of magnitude and extension; 
body can never be generated or destroyed. Bodies are things and are 
not generated, accidents (save magnitude and extension) are generated 
and are not things. These statements define the subject-matter of 
physical science. 

But the "object" as that which the sentient has, or as the content of 
the sentient 's experience, is not precisely the same as the "object" exist- 
ing outside the sentient. It is not these "divers motions" constituting 
the extra-organic object, but the immediate object of sense, and this is 
a phantasm, apparition, or combination of phantasms. Now the 
explanation of the psychological process and fact is cast in terms of 
physics. The external cause of the phantasm is motion in the extra- 
organic object. In fact, it would be accurate to say that the cause is 
that set of motions which is the extra-organic object. The phantasm 
itself, as a matter of existence, is motion ; but not the motion propa- 
gated into the organism without alteration. On the contrary, it is 
rather the product of the combination or interaction of two mo- 
tions or two sets of motions. That which forms the content of the 
sentient's perception is, therefore, a complex of sense qualities; and it 
is the joint product of the extra-organic object and the equally physical 



20 IDEAANDESSENCE 

living organism. The psychological fact is thus not the "divers mo- 
tions" of the external object, but another set of "divers motions" dif- 
fering from the former in two ways : first, in that the latter are motions 
in the sentient organism, and secondly, in that they are the results of the 
former set of motions acting upon, and being reacted upon by, the per- 
cipient organism. In other terms, the psychological content is the im- 
mediate data of sense ; for physics it is the motion accidents of body. 
A remark of Hobbes's '* may elucidate the point. The sun, he says, 
seems to the eye no bigger than a dish : but "there is behind it some- 
where something else, I suppose a real sun, which creates these fancies, 
by working, one way or other, upon my eye, and other organs of my 
senses, to cause that diversity of fancy." The "real sun" indicates the 
external object stimulus; the "diversity of fancy," the sun-having-the- 
size-of-a-dish, is the content of the perception. 

We are simply endeavoring here to render clear the difference be- 
tween the phantasm and its extra-organic correspondent as Hobbes 
himself saw it. Both phantasm and extra-organic object are physical 
effects — neither is "mental." But the phantasm is not an exact replica 
of the "object," for they are two "sets of divers motions," and that set 
which is phantasm differs from the correlated set which is the outside 
"object" by the extent to which motions native to the sentient fuse 
with the motions propagated from the external object into the sentient. 
This is consequently no denial of a correspondence, nor, for that mat- 
ter, of some degree of similarity, between phantasm and outside ob- 
ject; that which is denied is the exact and complete similarity of 
phantasm and the object without the sentient. In brief, the fact that 
motions from without enter a living organism makes a difference to 
those motions. 

In the light of this, the assertion that Hobbes's doctrine has nothing 
to do with "mental states" seems justified. Phantasms are neither 
"mental," "spiritual," "psychical," nor are they "states of consciousness." 
Such terms with their customary and modern connotations are totally 
inapplicable to a psychology of the type of Hobbes's. Seth^^ affords a 
curious instance of this misapplication. "The immediate objects of the 
senses are, Hobbes finds, mere 'phantasms' or 'appearances' — as we 
should say, states of consciousness, having no existence outside the 
mind itself . . . the object of sense perception is purely subjective, 
and totally unlike the real object, which is the cause of the sense ap- 
pearance." But one is forced to protest that by "appearances," Hobbes 
does not mean what "state of consciousness, having no existence outside 
the mind" means for us. "Appearances" for Hobbes are related to the 
real thing as the image in the mirror to the object mirrored; they do 

" Decameron Physiologicum, Vol. 7, pp. 80-81. 

** English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy, pp. 61-62. 



HOBBES 21 

not imply an order of existences of a nature radically different from the 
objects of which they are the appearances. They are existences, ef- 
fects, of precisely the same nature as the "real thing." 

The image is thus related to the object as effect to cause, as an echo 
to the sounding body, or as a reflection in a mirror to the source from 
which ether vibrations spring. Now the question may here be raised : 
Are not images, these echoes and reflections, equivalent to states of con- 
sciousness? The answer must obviously depend upon what is the pre- 
cise meaning here ascribed to "states of consciousness." If we define the 
phrase as denoting simply what we are aware of in the operations of 
sense, and mean literally that, with no implied reservations and con- 
siderations concerning the status of things "in consciousness," or de- 
pendent for their existence or for their being experienced "on conscious- 
ness," or "having their existence only in the mind" — in short, if the 
phrase be emptied of all so-called subjectivistic implications, Hobbes's 
phantasms are states of consciousness. But it is essential that all 
these qualifications be made. It is easy to imagine that, were Hobbes 
asked what we are aware of in perceptions, he would regard the ques- 
tion as rather stupid, since every man possessing vision saw colors, 
and having ears heard sounds — in other words, was aware of images, 
echoes, reflections, phantasms. If states of consciousness are simply 
what we are aware of, Hobbes would regard it as trifling to ask if what 
we are aware of are states of consciousness. On the other hand, had 
Hobbes been asked if phantasms were "subjective," if they were de- 
pendent for their existence on consciousness, or the soul, or the mind; 
or had he been asked if the nature of phantasms were altered by the 
fact that some consciousness was aware of them, he would have been 
sorely puzzled to discover what the question was about. He would 
probably have looked upon it as on a par with asking if the image in 
the mirror were altered by the mirroring. Not to labor the point fur- 
ther, we may conclude that such questions almost unavoidably inject 
into Hobbes's doctrine elements not merely foreign to it, but beyond 
the ken of its author. The questions as to the adequateness to-day of 
Hobbes's psychology of perception, of the relation of that psychology 
to present-day positions, and of whether we should hold that Hobbes's 
phantasm is all that "state of consciousness" should signify, are very 
different from the question of what Hobbes did mean to say. 

If by "mind," in the statement quoted, Seth intends the subject of 
sense in Hobbes's meaning of the term, then it is true that appearances 
have no existence outside the mind itself — but then they are not "states 
of consciousness." For the subject of sense Hobbes does not call mind 
or soul or consciousness, but "some living creature" — and this is a sig- 
nificant fact. Hobbes's phantasms are what he calls them, store of 
experience. The manifold of experience is this store of phantasms. It 



22 IDEAANDESSENCE 

is for Hobbes what the sequence of states of consciousness is for the 
modern subjectivist. Hobbes's manifold of experience are states of a 
living creature, phenomena of motion, but the series of states of con- 
sciousness, as the phrase is generally used in later subjectivistic 
thought, implies a group of conceptions and distinctions which simply 
did not exist for Hobbes. It is even unfair to Hobbes to say that his 
store of phantasms is identical with the sequence of physiological pro- 
cesses or neuroses which in most modern psychology is regarded as par- 
alleling a very dissimilar sequence of psychical states. It is unfair 
because it tends to represent Hobbes as reacting against a distinction 
in orders of existence and as erasing the whole world of the "psychical" 
in order to maintain the sufficiency of the world of the "physical." The 
point on which too much insistence can hardly be laid, however, is that 
such a picture of Hobbes is unhistorical, not founded on Hobbes's own 
words, and that, therefore, the questions that we have been considering 
are irrelevant. 

The trouble, to repeat, is that subjectivity and objectivity, conscious- 
ness, mental states, psychical existences, and the like elements of later 
psychological and epistemological instruments of terminology are com- 
pletely beyond the sphere of Hobbes's thought. The appearances and 
the real objects can not be subsumed under these categories. They 
belong to the one order of existents. The unlikeness of one to the other 
is simply the unlikeness of one motion to another, of object to reflected 
image, and not the unlikeness of a "subjective conscious state" to an 
"objective real object." 

When we inquire concerning Hobbes's position with reference to the 
cognitive correspondence of idea and thing, we are in danger of forcing 
his thought into channels foreign to it, if we seek to compel an answer. 
The danger lies in assuming that the cognitive correspondence of idea 
and thing is at the same time a psychophysical correlation of idea as 
psychical state with a physiological state (and since the latter is the 
effect of an extra-organic physical cause, the correlation extends to that 
of psychical state and physical object). It is this confusion which is 
at the bottom of Seth's misinterpretation considered above. In for- 
cing this meaning upon Hobbes, we should be introducing surreptitiously 
that very dualism of substances which he has explicitly repudiated. 

In terms of Hobbes's psychology, there is no such correlation of 
psychical idea with object, since there is nothing that is psychical or 
spiritual or "mental" in this sense of the term. From the psychological 
standpoint, the only correspondence that exists is that of effects to 
causes. But from the standpoint of knowledge, this relation of cause 
and effect is the basis of a cognitive correspondence. The experience of 
the effects affords the opportunity for knowledge of the causes. 
Therefore, in raising the question of the cognitive correspondence of 



H O B B E S 23 

idea and thing, we are inquiring how Hobbes uses the physical effects 
in the sentient, that is, the phantasms, in order to arrive at a knowledge 
of objects, that is, of causes. 

Now the mere possession of images is not, according to Hobbes, in 
itself knowledge. Image-phantasms are more accurately regarded as 
the occasions and opportunities for cognition than actual cases of 
knowing. Images afford a certain guidance to the sentient organism in 
its activities, but are not in themselves knowledge. As physical effects 
in the all-embracing system of nature, phantasms and images are part 
of the subject-matter of inquiry rather than the knowing itself. Real 
knowledge depends on the consistent use of the terms of discourse, 
and ratiocination is computation involving such consistent manipula- 
tion of terms. But the terms must be connected up with objects 
(which are really causes in the dynamic system of nature) in a scheme 
of definite correspondence. This is secured through the instrumentality 
of the image-phantasms. 

Now the image-phantasms which make up experience are as varied 
as their outside causes. The possession of certain phantasms leads to 
the adoption of a name as a sign of the causes of the phantasm-effects. 
Thus, as in the illustration cited above, the term "sun" will signify the 
extra-organic cause of the intra-organic state or phantasm "sun-being- 
the-size-of-a-dish," and of experiences of a similar nature. The "real 
sun, which creates these fancies" is the cognitive correlate of the term 
"sun" which is adopted in order to connect the "diversity of fancy" or 
phantasms with the "real sun." Through the use of names as signs 
associated with a given group or kind of phantasms, we are able to 
discriminate and distinguish the external causes. Thus the cognitive 
function of phantasms resides not so much in the images themselves 
(for the image in and by itself is not knowing) as in their capacity to be 
indices of the extra-organic causes, and in fixation of this causal refer- 
ence by means of names. The names once fixed, agreed upon, and 
their reference maintained, ratiocination, or computation by means of 
names, furnishes knowledge. 

It is clear, therefore, that the doctrine of cognitive correspon- 
dence in Hobbes is far from any implications of psychophysical dualism. 
The correspondence, to repeat, is based on the relation of cause and 
effect. And both cause and effect are of the same order of existence, 
physical changes in a mechanical system. The similarity of idea 
(phantasm) and object is a similarity of cause and effect. 

In the philosophy of Hobbes, accordingly, plurality of substances is 
supplanted by a mechanical system of nature. The cognitive corre- 
spondence of idea and object, in so far as it means a plurality or 
duality of substances, has no place in his doctrine. The result is that 
the problems connected with the contrasts of two realms of existents, 



24 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

the psychical and the physical, of mind and matter, body and soul, of 
"mental state and object," of the subjective and the objective, simply 
do not arise. Their absence from his philosophy may, or may not, sig- 
nify grave deficiencies in his doctrine; its freedom from such problems 
may indicate its inadequacy. That, however, is not here in question. 
The point of interest is that, with the rejection of a two-substance 
theory, there is no occasion for such questions. Indeed, the nature of 
Hobbes's epistemology is more truly grasped by keeping in mind his 
conception of nature as a mechanical system of causes and effects than 
by reference to the doctrine of one substance. For at bottom, as has 
been intimated, the notion of one substance plays a silent r61e. It is an 
empty notion for Hobbes, and is really supplanted by the theory of 
nature. His concern with the notion is derived mainly from the histori- 
cal importance of the concept of substance. And this much appears 
from his philosophy, that the notion of a single substance, or more cor- 
rectly, the new scientific view of nature, as the metaphysical foundation 
for his developed thought, did not generate for him that order of prob- 
lems which is characteristic of the doctrine of the duality of substances. 

It is our purpose to maintain that the psychology of Spinoza is simi- 
lar in character to that of Hobbes. This likeness in standpoint is but 
one instance of the several similarities existing between the thought of 
the two philosophers. We can not from this infer, however, that 
Hobbes exerted an important influence upon Spinoza. Kuno Fischer 
is of the opinion that the influence, if there was any, was indirect.^® 
Toennies has painstakingly worked out in detail points of resemblance 
without, however, satisfactorily establishing the dependence of one on 
the other.^^ 

So far as the similarity in character of their psychologies is to be 
considered, certain doctrines held in common by the two men would 
render some degree of influence probable. Hobbes and Spinoza shared 
the mechanistic view of nature; and for both, the human body and 
"human nature" were an integral part of nature. For both, the realm 
of existence was the realm of dynamics and of efficient causes. This is 
a point of more real similarity than their allegiance to a doctrine of the 
oneness of substance. For Hobbes, substance was after all a rather 
empty and unutilizable notion; the dynamical, mechanical character 
of nature, its systematic uniformity, was far more significant for his 
work. We may regard substance as meaning for Hobbes just this me- 
chanical system. That is, it was substance as standing for this me- 
chanical system that fructified his thinking. For Spinoza, on the con- 
trary, the mechanical system of nature means the attribute of exten- 
sion; it is secondary rather than primary; while substance is God, 

" "Spinoza," Geschichle der neueren Philosophie, 1909, Vol. 2, pp. 618-619. 

•^ "Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Spinoza," Vierteljahresschrift fUr wissenschaftliche 
Philosophie, Vol. 7. 1883. 



H O B B E S 25 

God or substance is the first principle upon which depends the organic 
assemblage of concepts that forms adequate knowledge. The common 
interest of Spinoza and Hobbes in the deductive geometric method 
really covers a difference of spirit. For Hobbes the importance of the 
geometrical method is derived from his practical identification of mathe- 
matics and dynamics or mechanics. For Spinoza the logically and or- 
ganically necessary relation and dependence of all other concepts upon 
the concept of God or substance render the geometrical method the 
type of all true method. Expressed in a different way, for Spinoza the 
metaphysical doctrine of the oneness of substance was the beginning 
and the crowning achievement of knowledge; while for Hobbes it was a 
metaphysical notion mainly valuable as clearing the way for a mecha- 
nistic science of nature. 

In a sense, therefore, their psychological principles show similarity 
because of a common outlook upon the natural world. From this point 
of identity, however, their philosophies radiate in different directions, 
determined by significant differences of spirit and purpose. A detailed 
consideration of the points of agreement and disagreement are not here 
in place. It is sufficient to indicate briefly that it is not a priori 
improbable that Spinoza's psychology should be in essentials like that 
of Hobbes's. 



PART II 

SPINOZA 
I 

Spinozistic exegesis is complicated by the fact that historical circum- 
stances apparently render necessary the construction of his work as a 
direct continuation of the thought of Descartes. Exegesis ha§ ac- 
cordingly been generally eisegesis in terms of Cartesianism. Taken 
superficially, the setting of Spinoza's work seems to point unmistakably 
to such a manner of envisaging his development and purpose. Looking 
forward from the outcome of the Cartesian philosophy, the situation is 
in effect often summarized as follows : Starting from the dualism of sub- 
stances, that is, the conception of existence as dual, unity may be at- 
tained in several ways. One substance may be regarded as constituting 
all reality, and the existence of the other substance totally denied. Or 
one might take one substance "reality" and depress the other to the 
status of "appearance." Or, finally, the duality of existence marked by 
the two finite opposed substances might be retained in the field of 
"appearance," the duality being, at bottom, validated ; the truly real 
is then to be found in a single substance which is neither of the Cartesian 
finite substances, these latter degenerating to the rank of attributes 
of the one substance. This would mean that the distinction between 
finite and infinite substance is pushed to its logical consequences. In 
any case, Descartes's distinction constitutes a persistent menace to 
the substantial character of finite substances and to their reality. The 
distinction represents instability. From this angle of vision, it is easy 
to assume that any one after Descartes who spoke of attributes of 
thought and extension, had simply substituted for his term "finite sub- 
stances" the term "attributes," accepting, as to the rest, the distinction 
between orders of existence, the verbal change leaving unaffected many 
of the implications of the duality in existence. Thus it is powerfully 
suggested that we make Spinoza a Cartesian. His passion for unity 
and his realization of the problems left by Descartes are to be regarded 
as leading him to lower the finite substances to the position of attri- 
butes of the single real substance, and that in this we have the key to 
his philosophy. 

This may be simple enough, but it is misleading. It presents Spinoza 
as primarily a sort of apostolic successor of Descartes, the continuer of 
the Cartesian tradition, and the self-appointed synthesiser of that 



SPINOZA 27 

philosophy. Descartes's influence on Spinoza, obviously not to be 
denied, may easily be overestimated, and generally is. The relation of 
Spinoza to Descartes is not that implied in describing their relation as 
one of pupil to master, of disciple to apostle. In the first place, there 
exists a difference of spirit, of purpose, and of interest that should not 
be minimized. And secondly, the interpretation of the doctrinal se- 
quence, attributed by Windelband to the Hegelian "Geschichts-kon- 
struktion" which assigns to Malebranche and the occasionalists the 
r61e of intermediaries between Descartes and Spinoza, conflicts with 
the chronological order. Windelband points out that the letters of 
Geulincx and the chief work of Malebranche were antedated by 
Spinoza's Ethics. Spinoza could not have been influenced by the 
thought of the occasionalists and Malebranche concerning the inter- 
action of substances.^ And finally, it is, perhaps, worth noticing that 
Spinoza's contemporaries do not appear to have regarded him as an 
outstanding champion of Cartesianism. 

According to Windelband, the genesis of Spinoza's doctrine can not 
be substantially accredited to any one agency — neither the Jewish 
Cabbalists, nor the "Scholastics of the Jewish Middle Ages," nor to 
Bruno. All these movements, as well as the Cartesian, were influential, 
but not even Descartes can be selected as the predominant agency. 
And whatever the pristine determinants were, it was Spinoza's peculiar 
purposes, aspirations, and genius that vitalized and utilized them. 

If we approach Spinoza by way of Cartesianism alone, we immedi- 
ately land in the midst of perplexities. Spinoza's philosophy centers in 
the doctrine of the attributes and of their relation to substance. If we 
identify Spinoza's thought attribute with Descartes's finite immaterial 
substance and the extension attribute with the latter's finite material 
extended substance — if the only point of difference between them is 
that implied by "attribute of substance" as contrasted with "finite sub- 
stance" — then a host of difficulties are imported into the situation. 
For Spinoza's parallelism of modes becomes virtually a parallelism of 
the spiritual or psychical to the material or physical. Spinoza must 
then be supposed to have started where Descartes finished, with the ir- 
reducible opposition of a spiritual principle to the material principle. 
We should be led to assume that Spinoza would accept for the defini- 
tions of his attributes the meanings that his putative master assigned to 
the two finite substances. Spinoza, in consequence, is to be understood 
as having started with a dualistic view of existence as the presupposi- 
tion of his philosophy; it must form the unquestioned and incontesta- 
ble first principle of his thought. Or stated without reservation, that 
which for Descartes was a problem, recognized by him as really un- 
solved in his own speculations, is the point of departure and basis for 

1 Windelband, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, Leipzig 191 1, Vol. i, pp. 206-207. 



28 IDEAANDESSENCE 

the investigations of Spinoza. Reducing finite substances to attributes, 
his task may be taken as the reconciHation in the unity of substance of 
the opposition left by Descartes between two finite substances. 

The mere statement of the consequences following upon this fashion 
of conceiving the origin and first intention of Spinoza's philosophy is 
sufficient to throw suspicion upon it. The existence of Spinoza's 
Principles of the Cartesian Philosophy probably is partly responsible for 
the habit of judging Spinoza in this light. But, after all, it is the prin- 
ciples of the Cartesian philosophy that he is expounding for his pupil, 
and we have no warrant to assume that, therefore, it is the single great 
source of his own thought. His appendix to the work indicates his 
independence. 

We are here interested in Spinoza's psychology. Now if the method 
of interpretation that has just been stated is not erroneous, then in- 
evitably there follow certain assumptions that must be made prepara- 
tory to the study of his psychology. If Spinoza's attributes involve the 
distinction and contrast that Descartes's finite substances signified, his 
psychology is, and must have been, developed with those contrasts as 
limiting notions. Thought, reason, intellect, soul, idea, notion, con- 
ception, mind — such terms as these must denote and connote phe- 
nomena of spiritual existence, events in what is now an immaterial, 
spiritual nonextended attribute, or else stand for that attribute itself. 
The Cartesian antagonism between ideas in a soul substance and extra- 
organic objects in extended substance (or intra-organic physiological 
processes) would surge up in Spinoza's thought in quite analogous 
form. The demotion of finite substance to attribute would be, in many 
respects connected herewith, a merely verbal change. The Cartesian 
hesitancy about the image — the desire to assign it unconditionally to 
the body and the constraint to connect it in some manner with the soul 
— would be duplicated in his successor's thought. The Cartesian strug- 
gle to devise an interaction between the two substances constituting 
the human being without flagrant contradiction would be expected to 
recur in Spinoza in the guise of interaction between the attributes; or 
else a solution would be sought in the direction of the unity of sub- 
stance. In short, it is difficult to understand why Spinoza should not 
have experienced in his psychology precisely the perplexities that 
haunted Descartes, if Spinozism is correctly depicted as historically 
and logically an expression of the growth of Cartesianism. Indeed, one 
would expect to find the entanglements more vividly sensed, indicated, 
and combated. Such an obviously artificial solution of the question of 
the reciprocal influencing of mind and body as that proffered by Des- 
cartes should accordingly be magnified by Spinoza as a crucial point 
in his predecessor's philosophy, and to be treated distinctively either 
as a mistaken concession to the tradition of the interaction of a plur- 



SPINOZA 29 

ality of substances, or else as a suggestion for a solution needing more 
elaborate justification. Spinoza, however, can hardly be considered 
as having grappled with these problems; on the contrary, he seems 
largely to have left them to one side. Little or nothing in his writings 
suggests that he felt that these elements of Cartesian teaching were 
germane to his own philosophy. His concern with them, wherever such 
concern is traceable, is casual, and implies that he did not recognize 
them as indigenous to his own philosophic world. The doctrine of two 
attributes in relation to one substance might, or might not, have had 
advantages over the problem of the relation of two finite substances to 
one infinite substance — but this question is pertinent: Would the 
transformation of the problem, granting that Spinoza's problem 
is just a transformation of that of Descartes, eliminate really or ap- 
parently the unsolved questions of the psychology of a being composed 
of two so different constituents? If the former doctrine were merely a 
restatement of the Cartesian position, the differences being in the main 
terminological, Spinoza would probably have shown himself to be 
acutely aware of all those quandaries and embarrassments that spring 
to the fore when the duality of finite existence is asserted. The con- 
clusion seems to be that, while it would be excessive to deny the in- 
fluence of the Cartesian philosophy and psychology, such influence is 
not what it is generally supposed to be, and further, that we can deny 
that Spinoza's philosophy and psychology form a restatement of Car- 
tesian problems and a direct doctrinal continuation of Descartes's 
eff^orts toward synthesis. 

The difficulties involved in putting such a construction upon Spinoza 
will appear in the sequel. It is to be maintained in this essay that 
Spinoza's philosophy in general, and his psychology in particular, can 
not be regarded as such a restatement of problems and a later stage in 
the evolution of one doctrine. The claim is advanced that Spinoza's 
psychology is thoroughly like that of Hobbes, at least in its first intention. 
It is, on the whole, as radically "physiological" as that of Hobbes. As was 
asserted of the latter, so of Spinoza it is affirmed, that properly speaking 
he is not concerned with "mental states," "states of consciousness," 
"spiritual psychical entities," or "immaterial ideas" in a spiritual prin- 
ciple. His psychological terminology is free from implications pos- 
sessed by that of Descartes. Neither his philosophy nor his psychol- 
ogy is rooted in a doctrine of existence as dual. Nor do his point of 
view and his presuppositions force him to this position in metaphysics. 
His psychology, consequently, has nothing to do with that doctrine. 

This, to repeat, is Spinoza's real psychology. Whatever symptoms 
of tendencies toward "spiritualism" may appear in his psychology are 
properly to be taken as lapses from his characteristic standpoint. The 
extent to which he may have departed from the attitude intrinsic to his 



30 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

system as a whole, is a matter difficult to estimate, first, because of 
terminological considerations, and secondly, because it is hard to cal- 
culate the extent to which he felt the psychological implications of 
Descartes's doctrine. And after all, Spinoza is a metaphysician and 
ethicist rather than a psychologist ; the former interests determine the 
latter, rather than the reverse. Occasional departures from the domi- 
nant standpoint may occur in the interests of a purpose other than 
psychological, but the majority of passages in which a harking back to 
pure Cartesianism seems latent turn out to have such allusions only 
because of the initial assumption that the essential in Spinozism is ade- 
quately conceived only in connection with the outcome of Descartes's 
work. 

II 

As a preliminary orientation in the study of Spinoza it may be 
well to enumerate some of the points wherein his work and that of 
Descartes are similar. Concerning these similarities, however, certain 
reservations must be made immediately in order to render clear what 
follows. In the first place, the instances of agreement are not those 
which are ordinarily asserted ; and secondly, as will become evident, 
the common elements may forcefully suggest, but can not prove, that 
Cartesian writings are the only source or even the chief source from 
which Spinoza might have derived just these elements of agreement. 
For the important accordances were parts of the general philosophical 
tradition, and the two men may have depended on the same sources. 
And it is just in respect to those notions which are peculiarly Cartesian 
innovations that Spinoza shows least agreement. The concepts of 
substance, of essence, and the mechanical theory of nature, for ex- 
ample, are by no means exclusively Cartesian. The results of this 
cursory survey of Descartes will indicate that just where Spinoza and 
Descartes are most in accord there is the least need of assuming the 
latter as the inspiration of the former. If Descartes's break with 
tradition turns upon the discovery of the method of doubt, and allied 
changes, it is at just this point that the line of cleavage between the 
two systems begins. 

We have been at pains to state that Spinoza's problem is not set in 
terms of the relation of psychical ideas in a spiritual substance to modes 
of a physical, extended substance. Nor does Spinoza split existence 
into halves, things of the mind and things of extension. Idea means for 
Spinoza what essence had denoted in scholastic philosophy. It is a 
logical entity, and in explicated form and verbally expressed, it is a 
definition. Now historically speaking, the problem of the relation of 
essence to existence verged on the commonplace, while the Cartesian 
problem of relating two finite opposed substances was relatively novel. 



SPINOZA 31 

It was, accordingly, more natural for Spinoza*s metaphysics and episte- 
mology to turn upon the former distinction than the latter — to con- 
ceive the correspondence of the order of ideas to the order of things in 
terms of essence and existence than in terms of spiritual entities in one 
substance to physical things constituting the modes of another sub- 
stance. 

This both strengthens the considerations which render dubious the 
envisagement of Spinoza solely from the Cartesian two-substance 
point of view, and indicates the direction from which a more successful 
approach may be undertaken. In addition, we are afforded an impor- 
tant clue to the real nature of the Cartesian influence. The Rules for 
the Direction of the Mind comes nearer being the major source of Des- 
cartes's influence on Spinoza, or represents more adequately Spinoza's 
point of departure, than any other of Descartes's writings that we can 
assign. Spinoza's point of departure, in so far as it is Cartesian at all, 
or is exemplified in Descartes, is discoverable, not in the final stages of 
the earlier thinker's work, but in the first stages. It was denied above 
that the relation of finite substance to infinite substance, and the 
psychological and epistemological consequences of the dualism, were 
taken by Spinoza as the kernel of his problem. Now just these elements 
of Descartes's thought are least apparent in the Rules for the Direction 
of the Mind. A brief consideration of the position developed in this 
work of Descartes will afford a desirable approach to Spinoza. 

In the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, as compared with later 
writings, the dualism of substances had not become a powerful or con- 
trolling feature in the writer's thought. The psychological and episte- 
mological consequences of that doctrine were avoided, or else had not 
been clearly sensed. In this early work Descartes is chiefly concerned 
with notions closely allied to typical doctrines of scholasticism. This 
is especially true of his treatment of intuition and "simple natures," 
"simple truths," or essences. The question of the status of these simples 
in relation to an immaterial spiritual substantial mind was at least in 
abeyance, or, more probably, had not arisen. The knowledge problem 
as stated in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind has close affiliations 
with orthodox scholasticism. The position is consistently maintained 
that the understanding alone is the knower, while sense, imagination, 
and memory are "aids" to the understanding in its labors. "Nothing 
can be known prior to the understanding, since the knowledge of all 
things else depends upon this and not conversely." When one has 
"clearly grasped all those things which follow proximately on the 
knowledge of the naked understanding, he will enumerate among other 
things whatever instruments of thought we have other than the under- 
standing; and these are only two, viz., imagination and sense. He will, 
therefore, devote all his energies to the distinguishing and examining 



32 IDEAANDESSENCE 

of these three modes of cognition, and seeing that in the strict sense 
truth and falsity can be a matter of the understanding alone, though 
often it derives its origin from the other two faculties, he will attend 
carefully to every source of deception in order that he may be on his 
guard." ^ But these aids are of service only with reference to corporeal 
things, for if the understanding "deal with matters in which there is 
nothing corporeal or similar to the corporeal, it can not be helped by 
those faculties (i.e., sense, memory, and imagination)." ^ Now the 
true function of understanding in itself, aside from its utilization of 
sense and imagination, is the discovery or apprehension (intuition) of 
the simple natures or logical self-evidents (that is, logical essences which 
are known per se), and their deductive ordering.^ Irreducible mathe- 
matical notions are such essences. The essences are, of course, imma- 
terial, in accordance with the typical scholastic position. In knowledge 
of essences, for Descartes, the activity of understanding is its own 
spontaneity, for the essences are congeners of an ideal or immaterial 
thinking principle. The knowing or understanding is thus the grasping 
of the ideal or immaterial nature of essence. The discernment of such 
ideal simples is an immediate act which Descartes, at this stage of his 
development at least, conceives as an immediate apprehension in a 
logical, not a psychological, sense. When he speaks of the deductive 
method, which rests upon the intuition of the unanalyzable logical 
elements as compared with the method of experience, he has in mind a 
method of ordering logical entities in a deductive scheme comparable 
to mathematical exposition. Mathematical formulae, in fact, stand 
for just such logical simples, or the results of thought upon such ele- 
mentary self-evidents. 

In the simple natures there is no falsity * and "in order to know 
these simple natures no pains need be taken, because they are of 
themselves sufificiently well known. Application comes in only in 
isolating them from each other and scrutinizing them separately with 
steadfast mental gaze." ^ Falsity occurs only through the failure to 
corroborate the results of successive logical steps by intuition and an 
active use of memory, or through uncritical reliance on the imagination 
and sense.® 

This preliminary stage in Descartes's meditations forces a problem 
upon him that resembles one which Hobbes had to face. Hobbes per- 
ceived that the experiential elements upon which knowledge of nature 
is to be built consist of phantasms and images, which are effects; but 

» Philosophical Works of Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, trans, by Ross and Haldane, 
Vol. I, pp. 24-25; cf p. 35. 
» ihid, p. 39. 

• cf. ibid, p. 16. 

• ibid, p. 42. 

' ibid, pp. 45-46. 

• cf. ibid, p. 44 



SPINOZA 33 

reasoning from efifects to causes can furnish only conjectural and par- 
ticular knowledge, and not necessary knowledge. Correspondingly in 
Descartes, the starting-point is essence, on the one hand, and on the 
other, the particular sense effects. With reference to a science of na- 
ture the mathematical truths of essence, immaterial and ideal, which 
are known with immediate certainty, are the bases of necessity in such 
knowledge. A science of nature implies a transition from ideal entities 
to physical existences. 

Descartes's Rules for the Direction of the Mind, with which we are 
here concerned, is hardly more than an unfinished sketch, and contains 
no complete solution of the problem. But the outlines of such a solu- 
tion are given. To these outlines we may here confine ourselves, re- 
fraining from a consideration of the transformations in the question 
and solution which may characterize his later thought. 

Now the question of a knowledge of nature demands a treatment of 
the psychology of perception and imagination. Sense and imagination 
in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind are purely properties of the 
body. The image is the species, now construed as essentially geometri- 
cal form, which is propagated, "uncontaminated and without bodily 
admixture from the external senses," to the fancy or imagination.^ 
The perceptual process furnishes an image whose mathematical kin- 
ship with the intuited pure logical essence of extension smooths over 
many difficulties. Because of this kinship, images and sensations can 
be subsumed under the deductions from essences. They are, therefore, 
at least existential exemplifications of a theoretical necessary conclu- 
sion. In so far as a science of nature or physical existences is mathe- 
matical in structure, the constitution of the image as a sort of geomet- 
rical form facilitates the transition from essence to existence, for the 
"infinitude of figures suffices to express all the differences in sensible 
things." ^ Whatever difficulties Descartes found at this time in con- 
ceiving the possibility of immediately apprehending the corporeal 
image were similarly lightened. The function of imagination and 
sense as the instruments of understanding is thus visible in its correct 
light. In order, therefore, to have knowledge of existence, there is no 
necessity for having recourse to particular occurrences, except in order 
to perceive the correspondence of the deductions from the formulae or 
essences to the particular modes of extension. 

The purpose of this excursus is to portray briefly the doctrine which 
served as orientating forces in shaping the Spinozistic method and 
purpose, whether the origin of this influence be exclusively, or in part, 
or not at all, in Descartes's Rules for the Direction of the Mind. In 
opposition to the customary manner of entering Spinoza's thought 

7 ibid, p. 38. 
^ibid, p. 37- 



34 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

from the dualistic outcome of Descartes, and of ascribing to Spinoza 
that dualism and its implications as his point of departure, this other, 
and juster, characterization of Spinoza's point of departure is given. 
Our denial that Spinoza was a Cartesian refers to the first characteriza- 
tion ; the obviously necessary recognition that Descartes must have 
exerted a directive influence upon Spinoza refers to the second charac- 
terization, and suggests what the deeper part of that influence was. 
It is not claimed, of course, that the Rules for the Direction of the Mind 
was the only source of the Cartesian influence. What is asserted is that 
the standpoint of this work is more similar to Spinozistic doctrines 
than most of the Cartesian works; and that if it were without great 
influence on Spinoza, yet the work reveals, as will appear in the sequel, 
such a sympathetic philosophical kinship with the latter's position 
that a direct and fruitful influence is powerfully suggested. On the 
other hand, with many of the later transformations of Descartes's 
tenets Spinoza must have been thoroughly at variance. At any rate, 
we may venture the assertion at the present stage that the approach 
to Spinoza from this element of Cartesian teaching is a better prepara- 
tion for the penetration of Spinoza's meaning than the more customary 
mode of procedure. The complete justification of this assertion, of 
course, is found only in this essay taken as a whole. 

Spinoza himself has given us an exposition of the "Principles of the 
Cartesian Philosophy." Obviously, as the writer of an exposition of 
that philosophy, he writes as a Cartesian, since it is Descartes's doc- 
trine that he is expounding. But he has also furnished an Appendix 
to that exposition, in which he purposed to treat, as the sub-title states, 
of certain general and special difficulties of metaphysics, of being and 
the affections of being, of God and His attributes, and of the human 
mind. Here we would naturally expect to discover indications of the 
precise nature of Descartes's influence on Spinoza, signs of modifica- 
tion in the former's doctrine in Spinoza's reaction to it, and clues to the 
future development of the latter. The following questions accord- 
ingly seem pertinent: What sort of philosophy does Spinoza offer in 
the Cogitata Metaphysica? What evidence does it afford that Spinoza 
attacks his problems from the standpoint of the outcome of Cartesian 
thought, and to what extent are Cartesian elements conscious or un- 
conscious presuppositions for Spinoza? What independence and 
original interest does the work reveal? In other words, are such later 
Cartesian elements as the duality of existence, the psychologically spiri- 
tual nature of the idea, and the spiritualistic trend of Cartesian psy- 
chology with its reflex influences on his epistemology and metaphysics, 
reproduced by Spinoza as accepted doctrines or tacit assumptions? 

The briefest answer to these questions is this: the Cogitata Meta- 
physica, in standpoint and spirit, is more closely affiliated with the 



SPINOZA 35 

leading ideas of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind than with any 
other Cartesian work. Spinoza impresses the reader as interpreting 
the Cartesian conceptions of the Principles in the light of notions 
analogous to, if not derived from, the principles of the Rules for the 
Direction of the Mind. 

The poles of the thought of the Cogitata Metaphysica are essences, on 
the one hand, and existences, on the other — a logically organized sys- 
tem of essences forming knowledge and a causally determined and me- 
chanically organized world or nature. Essences are logical entities, 
and just that. If we inquire what we mean by essence, we are referred 
to definition, for every definition explicates the essence of something.® 
Knowledge is wholly a matter of essences, and memory, imagination, 
and, presumably, sense are devices, instrumental in attaining knowl- 
edge, but no more than for Descartes in the Rules for the Direction of 
the Mind are they in themselves cognitive.^^ Their serviceableness 
appears when Spinoza confronts this difficulty : The formal essence has 
neither been created nor does it exist by itself, but it depends on the 
divine essence; the essences of things are eternal. How, then, can we, 
in the absence of adequate knowledge of the nature of God, the final 
ground of all explanation, know the essences of things? Spinoza's 
answer is that knowledge of the essences of things is possible because 
things are already created. If this were not the case, knowledge of 
things would be impossible except after adequate knowledge of the 
nature of God. Analogously, if we were ignorant of the nature of a 
parabola, it would be impossible to know the nature of its orderly ap- 
plications. Spinoza's thought may be rendered in this way : true knowl- 
edge of existence is knowledge of essence; from an adequate knowledge 
of the supreme essence, God, knowledge of all essences would follow. 
But since we do not possess such perfect knowledge, we must avail our- 
selves of the fact that created things exist as actualized essences, and 
through experience of the esse existentiae arrive at the perception of the 
essence. Sense and imagination facilitate the process ; they are occa- 
sions for, and auxiliary instrumentalities in, the process of cognizing 
the essence, while the actual apprehension of the essence through ex- 
perience of the factual exemplars is the function of understanding or 
reason alone. Imagination and memory are, accordingly, in Spinoza's 
language, mere entia rationis, or modes of thinking, which enable us 
more easily to retain, explain, and represent things of the mind 
{res intellectas) }'^ And knowledge as the system of apprehended es- 
sences relates to understanding alone. 

The mechanical theory of nature, sponsored by Descartes, is advo- 

9 c/. Cogitata Metaphysica, Pt. i, ch. 2, p. 193. All references to the works of Spinoza, unless 
otherwise specified, are to the Van Vloten and Land edition of the Opera, 3rd edition, 1914. 
JO Cogitata Metaphysica, Pt. i, ch. i, p. 188. 
" cf. ibid, Pt. I, ch. i, p. 188; ch. 2, p. 192. 



36 IDEAANDESSENCE 

cated by Spinoza. Existence, the world, natura naturata — all these 
terms express the same thing — is a mechanical system. In matter 
there is "nothing beyond mechanical textures and opera tions."^^ 
Had we sufficient knowledge, we would find everything in the order of 
nature as necessary as that which mathematics teaches. ^^ Natura 
naturata is only one single thing, and man is a part of nature, and as 
such a part must cohere with other parts. ^* It is significant that 
Spinoza does not say that man's body is a part of nature, but that man 
is a part of nature. He is subject to causal law, either as external 
cause or as internal cause. ^^ 

The assertion that the Cogitata Metaphysica does not ratify the Car- 
tesian duality of finite existence may encounter the obvious reply that 
Spinoza does speak of more than one substance; that he divides cre- 
ated substances into extension and thought.^^ But terminological 
identities are compatible with dissimilarities of meaning. In the first 
place, it is to be remarked that Spinoza uses the term "substance" 
loosely; it is clear that he has in mind what later on he signifies by 
attribute. But a more significant observation is this : he uses the terms 
"cogitatio" and "mens humana" for the created thought substance, and 
"mens increata" for the divine thought. Uppermost in Spinoza's mind 
is the relation of thought to essence. This uncreated mind, or divine 
thought, is the system of essences (which in God can not be separated 
from existence). The created thought substance, or mens humana, is 
that kind of being called esse ideae — being in so far as it is contained ob- 
jectively (objective) in the idea of God.^^ The spiritualistic and psycho- 
logical connotations of Descartes's thinking substance are in the main 
neglected. The only place in the Cogitata Metaphysica in which Spinoza 
seems to recognize these implications is in the last paragraph of the 
work, where we meet for the only time the contrast between res cor- 
poreales and res spirituales. One may admit that Spinoza may be 
oscillating between the interpretation of thought substance as sub- 
jective essence (essences as knowledge), and as a spiritual, immaterial, 
soul substance, with an existential status and possessing self-conscious- 
ness. But summarizing the tendencies of the Cogitata Metaphysica, it 
is unmistakable that the drift of Spinoza's reflection is away from the 
latter interpretation. This movement, as we shall see, is completed 
definitely in the Ethics. 

In short, in the Cogitata Metaphysica, as in the Rules for the Direction 
of the Mind, essence is a logical entity, its incorporeality relates to the 
ideality of form and not to the spirituality of an existential soul sub- 

"tfetd, Pt. 2, Ch. 6, p. 212. 

i» ibid, Pt. 2, ch. 6, p. 218. 
" ibid. 

" ibid, ch. 4, p. 200. 
i«»6id, Pt. 2, ch. I, p. 203. 
^1 ibid, Pt. I, ch. 2, p. 192. 



SPINOZA . '37 

stance, and knowledge rests upon logically immediate self-evidence. 
Knowledge of essences is a science of ideal forms ; the science of nature 
or existence is a science of hypotheses involving motion, divisibility, 
and causal necessity. The fundamental distinction is between essence 
and existence. The division of being into real entities and mental en- 
tities (entia realia and entia rationis) Spinoza repudiates as a bad divi- 
sion. ^^ The true division of being is into being which necessarily exists, 
or whose essence necessarily involves existence, and being whose es- 
sence does not involve existence except in possibility.^^ Mental beings 
— entia rationis — are looked upon without any notion of spiritual im- 
materiality. In an important passage he says that entia rationis out- 
side the mind {extra iniellectum) are pure nothing: but if by the term 
is signified the modes of thinking {modi cogitandi) themselves, they are 
real entities. "For when I ask: what is a species? I ask after nothing 
else than the nature of the mode of thinking itself, which is indeed a 
being, and is distinguished from another mode of thinking. But these 
modes of thinking can not be called ideas, nor can they be said to be 
true or false, just as love can not be called true. or false, but only good 
or bad."^'^ When this is connected with what Spinoza writes just before 
about imagination and memory as modes of thinking, and their identi- 
fication with movements of the (animal) spirits in the brain, it becomes 
evident that entia rationis or modi cogitandi are existences like the 
human body, and as operations of the human being are part of the 
order of nature. Essences as knowledge entities, that is esse ideae, 
have no existential status at all, and to inquire concerning such a status 
is illegitimate because it assumes that they are existences. And, above 
all, is it significant that Spinoza enumerates intellect itself as one of 
these modes of thought that is a real entity. ^^ 

It was pointed out above that it was more natural, with reference to 
Spinoza's whole philosophical inheritance, for him to conceive meta- 
physical and epistemological problems in terms of essence and existence 
than in terms of a finitely irreducible duality of incommutable sub- 
stances. The excursus into the thought of the Cogitata Metaphysica, a 
work which emanates from an early phase of the philosopher's medita- 
tions, has shown that essence and existence were the foci of his thought 
at that period, and that Spinoza seems on the whole to have inter- 
preted, with conscious intent or otherwise, Descartes's Principles in 
terms of this ancient contrast. It is the purpose of this essay to 
demonstrate that Spinoza's thought was faithful in its development to 
this beginning. Spinoza's terminology was undoubtedly affected by the 
Cartesian, and this has been a help in misleading the historian. The 

^^ibid, Pt. I, ch. I, p. 189. 
19 ibid, p. 190. 
^oibid, Pt. I, ch. i, p. 189. 
^^ibid, Pt. I, ch. I, p. 188, 



38 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

term "idea" was for scholasticism preferably used of ideas in the mind of 
God. Descartes comes to use it of ideas in the finite mind substance, 
and signifies by it not only the logical concept, innate ideas, but also at 
times any "psychological state." He was led to this departure from 
medieval usage through the reduction of the plurality of substances to 
a duality. For it is hardly doubtful that for Descartes the finite soul 
substance was more nearly a congener of the divine substance than was 
finite extended substance. The doctrine of innate ideas and the onto- 
logical argument, when stripped of their formal elements, depend upon 
the awakening of the soul to its own finiteness and imperfection ; and 
the germination of this thought is the necessary implication of the 
budding comprehension of a perfect being. The enlightenment of the 
mind is primarily just this discovery of the correlative notions of the 
perfection of the infinite being and the imperfection of the finite being. 
Now such a process connotes a certain peculiar intimacy between soul 
and God. This insight is the divinity of the finite mind. Thus the ap- 
plication of the term "idea" to at least some of the notions possessed by 
the finite mind in the dawning of rational comprehension is rendered 
facile by this implied relationship between finite and infinite mind sub- 
stance. The widening of the field of usage of the term comes with the 
acceptance of the psychological consequences of the dualism of sub- 
stances in the special form of the relation of two substances in one 
human being. So Spinoza's wider usage of the term may be ascribable 
to Cartesian example. The esse ideae means the being of essence as 
known or cognized or comprehended, as object of the (finite) mind. But 
if this account is accurate, new light is thrown upon the legitimacy of 
the common "Cartesian" interpretation of Spinoza, and upon Spinoza's 
interpretation of Descartes. For Spinoza, in accepting certain rela- 
tively novel terminological usages of Descartes, does not necessarily 
accept every such usage and all the Cartesian implications of terms. 
For the new application of the term "idea" in Descartes, shared by 
Spinoza whether derived from Descartes or not, retroactively facili- 
tates Spinoza's understanding of Descartes as primarily concerned 
with essence, and helps to explain his neglect of, or indifference to, 
the spiritualistic psychological connotations of the term in his pre- 
decessor's writings. 

The kinship of the Cogitata Metaphysica and the Rules for the Direc- 
tion of the Mind in their outlook upon problems is evident. As has 
been observed above, we are not here concerned with demonstrating 
important influences of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind upon 
Spinoza. It would be an exceedingly difficult matter to corroborate 
such a claim. The point of interest is that the starting-points of 
both thinkers contained striking similarities, and that a more ade- 
quate conception of their work is provided when we view them as pur- 



SPINOZA 39 

suing divergent paths, as they carry out their work, although starting 
from similar beginnings, rather than by involuting Spinoza's doctrine 
with the Cartesian speculations as a later stage of one development. 

Spinoza proceeds from the Cogitata Metaphysica without signal devi- 
ations from the general position therein indicated. Descartes, on the 
other hand, does change in more than one momentous way from the 
thought scheme of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Within the 
limits of this essay these differences can only be summarized. Des- 
cartes's test of truth in this work is logical immediacy, the self-ev idence 
of the logical entity or simple nature. To this Spinoza subscribesand to 
this he holds fast. But Descartes switches over to psychological im- 
mediacy, the certainty of the self-conscious soul in its awareness of its 
own states. The duality of existence, the spiritualistic psychology, 
influence, and are influenced by, the acute problems of teleology and 
mechanism, freedom and determinism, and personal immortality. 
Spinoza calmly accepts the consequences of the new science of nature, 
and passes on to doctrines concerning freedom, immortality, and 
teleology that could hardly have been other than exasperating and 
heretical to a true Cartesian. In the interplay of forces that drove Des- 
cartes to the new positions, the duality of existence emerges, more sig- 
nificant as result than as cause. Spinoza either escapes these forces, or 
does not succumb to them, or finally may have remained insusceptible 
to many considerations that were vital to other men of his day because 
they were uncongenial to his native interests. He is not driven to the 
doctrine of existence as dual, nor does the doctrine, through the media- 
tion of Descartes, affect him more than superficially. And there is 
good reason for saying that Spinoza never fully realized what the issues 
that resulted from the duality of substances really implied. In short, 
Spinoza was never truly a Cartesian. 

Ill 

Having thus outlined the approach and the point of view from 
which this study is undertaken, it behooves us to present Spinoza's 
doctrine in more detailed and positive fashion. The introductory 
remarks and the contentions therein outlined will be justified, it is 
hoped, by the results of an investigation free from the customary 
Cartesianism of the interpretations of the majority of commentators 
and historians. In showing the exact character of Spinoza's problem 
and the traits of his attempted solution, we shall first sketch the 
leading features of his doctrine concerning ideas and existence; after 
which will be considered his account of the idea and the image from 
the standpoint of psychology, attending in some detail to the difficul- 
ties that result from injecting Cartesian meanings into his terminology. 



40 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

Since Spinoza is so often hailed as the first "paralleHst," part of the 
task will be to vindicate the claim that neither "parallelism" nor "inter- 
actionism" in their common acceptation can legitimately be applied to 
this philosophy ; that his teaching is not characterized by "spiritualis- 
tic" tendencies derived from the Cartesian demarcation of two con- 
trasted fields of existence ; and that the application of such terms to this 
philosophy imports alien meanings into all of Spinoza's speculations. 

We begin with the essay On the Improvement of the Understanding 
and the account of knowledge and method there suggested. 

Knowledge is the possession of true ideas. All the modes of knowl- 
edge may be reduced to four. The fourth and highest kind is the 
perception arising "when a thing is perceived through its essence 
alone, or through the knowledge of its proximate cause." ^ This mode 
alone "comprehends the adequate essence of a thing without danger 
of error." ^ But what is a true idea? We are informed first of all that 
it is "something different from its correlate (ideatum)." ^ Secondly, it 
is "capable of being understood through itself." * The phrase "under- 
stood through itself" is pregnant with meaning, and that meaning 
reveals Spinoza's position. It signifies that the idea, as logical essence, 
has its place in a deductively ordered system, and bears to other 
essences the relation of superordination or subordination. "The idea, 
in so far as its formal essence {essentia formalis) is concerned, may be 
the object of another subjective essence {essentia objectiva). And again 
this second subjective essence will, regarded in itself, be something 
real and intelligible; and so on, indefinitely."^ The signification of 
another characteristic Spinozistic phrase, "idea ideae" the idea of an 
idea, expresses this same systematic arrangement of concepts. 

The adequate idea is the true idea; and the adequate idea is "the 
subjective essence {essentia objectiva) of a thing." ^ Finally, "the sub- 
jective essence of a thing and its certainty are one and the same." ^ 
Evidently, then, to have true knowledge is to possess true or adequate 
ideas {essentia objectiva) and to have such ideas is in itself to have 
certainty and to be assured of certainty. 

From this it follows that certainty does not depend on the estab- 
lishment of relations between ideas and things and the determination 
of the precise nature of such relations; the test of the validity of an 
idea is not in the correspondence of the idea and the thing. Method 
is not concerned with the derivation of ideas from the experiences of 
fact. "As for this reason {i.e., that the subjective essence involves 

I Vol. I, p. 7. 

* ibid, p. 10 
*ibid, p. II 

* ibid, p. 10 
•i ibid, p. 1 1 
« ibid, p. 12 
''ibid, p. 12 



SPINOZA 41 

certainty) the truth needs no sign — it being sufficient to possess the 
subjective essences of things, or, what amounts to the same, ideas, in 
order that all doubts may be removed — it follows that the true method 
. . . is the order in which we should seek for truth itself, or the 
subjective essences of things, or ideas, for all these expressions are 
synonymous." ^ Certainty is thus inherent in the logical essences and 
is not to be established by reference to what is extrinsic to them. 
Method is, therefore, a question of the apprehension of the logical cer- 
tainty of an idea and of its involution in a system of logical concepts. 
"Method ought necessarily to be concerned with reasoning or under- 
standing: that is, method is not identical with reasoning in order to 
understand the causes of things, still less is it the comprehension of the 
causes of things; but it is to understand what a true idea is by dis- 
tinguishing it from other perceptions and by investigating its nature, 
in order that we may know our power of understanding." ^ "Method 
is nothing else than reflective knowledge, or the idea of an idea." ^° 
But if truth, as Spinoza says, "makes itself manifest," method must 
contain principles of guidance, or tests, by means of which the true 
idea can be disentangled from the welter of fictions, inadequate ideas, 
chimeras, and false ideas. The surmounting of this difficulty pivots 
on the distinction between essence and existence. "Every perception 
is either of a thing considered as existing, or of the essence alone. 
Now 'fiction' is chiefly concerned with things considered as existing." ^^ 
Error, in general, can not arise from the logical essence, for that 
would be equivalent to error arising from truth, but only from its 
obscuration by, or its concealment beneath, the foreign accretions 
imported from the experiences of the particulars of existence. In a 
word, "ideas fictitious, false, and the rest, originate in the imagina- 
tion." ^2 Now as we shall see later, the Spinozistic conception of 
imagination is purely physiological in nature. The operations of the 
imagination "whereby the effects of imagination are produced, take 
place according to other laws quite different from the laws of the 
understanding." We fall into "grave errors through not distinguish- 
ing accurately between the imagination and the understanding." ^^ 
"Ideas fictitious, false, and the rest" (that is, in general, all error) 
originate in the imagination, that is, in "certain sensations, fortuitous 
(so to speak) and disconnected, which do not arise from the power of 
the mind itself, but from external causes, according as the body, sleep- 
ing or waking, receives various motions." ^^ Words are a great source 

* ibid, p. 12. 

* ibid, p. 12, italics mine. 
^^ibid, p. 12. 

" ibid, p. 15. 
" ibid, p. 26. 
" ibid, p. 27. 
" ibid, p. 26. 



42 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

of error, but words are a part of the imagination. Words lead to error 
when we form conceptions that are occasioned by confusions in 
memory because of certain bodily conditions. Words, since they are 
formed at the caprice of the vulgar, are signs of things as they are in 
imagination, not as they are in the understanding. Here we find the 
characteristic distinction between the facts of imagination and the 
ideas of the understanding.^^ And error results from the failure to 
discriminate between the two. Imagination, it is clear, is the instru- 
ment through which the experience of particular existences is made 
possible ; if the presentations from imagination of particular existences 
be selected as the source of knowledge, we shall be deceived. For the 
true knowledge of things is derived not from the imaginative repre- 
sentation (itself an existent, a thing) of particular existents, but from 
the unalloyed concept or essence. For this reason the confusion of 
essence and existence was called the pivotal point in the treatment 
of error. 

The resolution of the problem amounts to this: the true idea is 
simple, clear, and distinct, and carries within itself the principle by 
which its certainty is made manifest: the fiction, the inadequate idea, 
and in general all falsities are deficient in one or all of these respects. 
"A true idea {cogitatio) is distinguished from a false one, not so much 
by its extrinsic mark (denominatio) , but most of all by its intrinsic mark 
. . . there is in ideas something real, whereby the true are distin- 
guished from the false. . . For thought is said to be true, if it 
involves subjectively (objective) the essence of any principle which 
has no cause, and is known through itself and in itself. Wherefore the 
reality (forma) of true thought must be situated in that thought itself, 
without reference to other thoughts: nor does it acknowledge the 
object as its cause, but must depend on the very power and nature 
of the understanding." ^^ Understanding in itself, therefore, is able 
to establish the truth and reality of its thought. The devoted mind, 
possessed of true insight and correct method, can find within itself 
the guarantee of the validity of its ideas. This is an expression of 
Spinoza's rationalistic faith. 

Let us ask: What is the "object aimed at"? and What are the "means 
of its attainment"? As to means, we learn that everything must be 
conceived "either through its essence alone or through its proximate 
cause." ^^ The true method of discovery is to "form thoughts from 
some given definition," and a definition, we note, "must explain the 
inmost essence of a thing." ^^ 

If definition, expressing the inmost essence of a thing, that is, the 

" cf. ibid, p. 27. 
'• ibid, p. 22. 
" ibid. p. 28. 
!• ibid, p. 29. 



SPINOZA 43 

truly logical definition, is the means, what is the object aimed at? It 
is "the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas, such as are made by the 
pure intellect {mens) and not by chance motions of the body." The 
distinction between imagination and understanding evidently under- 
lies this statement. ^^ In a word, the goal is completely unified knowl- 
edge. But the peculiar meaning of such knowledge for Spinoza must 
be determined. "In order that all ideas may be reduced to one," 
Spinoza asserts, we must so "associate and order them that our mind 
may, as far as it can, report subjectively {objective) the reality of 
nature, both as whole and as parts." ^^ But in an ordered system of 
essences, there must be some principle which contains in itself the 
secret of that order, coherence, and unity. "In order that our mind 
may report wholly . . . the image of nature, our mind should 
draw out all its ideas from the idea which represents the origin and 
source of the whole of nature." ^^ This first great idea, the architec- 
tonical principle of the system of essences as forming knowledge, we 
shall discover to be the idea of God or Substance. "We should inquire 
whether there be any being . . . that is the cause of all things, so 
that its essence, represented in thought {objective), may be the cause 
of all our ideas : and then our mind will to the utmost possible extent 
represent nature; for it will possess, subjectively, nature's essence, 
order, and union." ^^ 

Now the expressions "cause of ideas" and "cause of things" bring 
into consideration the attributes, thought, and extension. The term 
"cause" is used in two meanings, dependent upon the distinction be- 
tween the attributes. The attribute of thought is nothing but the 
series of ideas or logical essences arranged in logical sequence. "Cause" 
as referring to this series has a purely logical meaning, expressing the 
subordination of concepts. One idea causes another in the sense that 
the concept of a circle is the cause of certain other ideas, those of the 
properties of a circle, which can be deduced therefrom. The attribute 
of extension comprises the series of physical things, or simply, things. 
With respect to this series, the term "cause" has the ordinary scientific 
meaning, the conditions of the existence of a given thing. 

All things, the sum total called nature, as comprehended under the 
attribute of extension, are existences. But as comprehended under 
the attribute of thought, they are not existences — they do not exist, 
but they are known. For the attribute of thought is the series of 
essences or pure concepts. It is meaningless to ask whether the 
essences exist. Knowledge, therefore, is the apprehension of things 
under the attribute of thought, that is, as essences. And just as the 

19 cf. Spinoza's note. 

20 ibid, p. 28, 

21 ibid, p. 13. 
^ibid, p. 30. 



44 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

causal nexus of existence is a processus from God or Substance, so 
the logical nexus of essences is a processus from God or Substance. 
True progress of the understanding requires, accordingly, the con- 
templation of the "series of fixed and eternal things" (the essences), 
not the "series of particular and mutable things." Of the latter, Spinoza 
says that "their existence has no connection with their essence, or 
. . . is not eternal truth. Neither is there any need that we should 
understand their series, for the essences of particular mutable things 
are not to be gathered from their series or order of existence, which 
would furnish us with nothing beyond their extrinsic denominations, their 
relations, or, at most, their circumstances . . . these mutable particular 
things depend so intimately and essentially . . . upon the fixed things, 
that they can not either be or be conceived without them." ^^ 

We are now in a position to understand aright what is meant by 
the assertion that the "order and connection of ideas is the same as 
the order and connection of things." This parallelism has no implica- 
tion of psychophysical parallelism. What is intended by Spinoza 
is a statement of the correlation of logical essence and thing, between 
the definition or explanation of a thing and the thing itself. There is 
but one existential series, that of material things. If our concept 
system of knowledge is true, if it is knowledge of actuality, then the 
order and connection of ideas must be the same as the order and con- 
nection of things. That is, existence contains exemplars, actualiza- 
tions of the essences, or of some of them at least. All that exists and 
is actual illustrates, conforms to, and bodies forth some essence. It 
is necessary to refrain from identifying the "existence" of Spinoza 
with the "physical" half of the contrast between the spiritual and the 
material. That is, our conception of what Spinoza intends by existence 
must be strictly divorced from any connection with the connotations 
of the dualistic view of existence. In the light of the fact that Spinoza 
has little or nothing to say concerning "spiritual" existences, we have 
no warrant for assuming the dual view as the contextual setting of his 
notion of the existential. To assert that the existential series is the 
world of the physical, the corporeal, or of "matter" is apt to introduce 
furtively just that distinction between two fields of existence which 
we are here concerned to prove foreign to Spinoza. It is likely, at 
least, to project his utterances upon such a background that he will 
appear to be reacting against the notion of spiritual existence and is 
interested in denying such existence and in affirming that all existence 
is corporeality. The meaning of a Cartesian finite substance is more 
amply elucidated when each is utilized in turn as the setting of the 
other. But it is not being scrupulously exact when we adopt such a 
procedure with Spinoza. 

3> ibid, p. 34. 



SPINOZA 45 

. Whether Spinoza's true position amounts to the same thing as assert- 
ing that all existence is matter, is one thing; but whether he was 
consciously interested in limiting existence to "matter" and in denying 
psychical or spiritual existence, is a very different thing. With the 
first we have at present no concern; as for the second, it seems more 
faithful to Spinoza's development, meaning, and purposes to repre- 
sent him as being largely indifferent to the spiritual-physical contrast 
and as having remained for the most part aloof from the history of 
the dualism in Cartesian circles. When we seek to identify Spinoza's 
existential series with the notion of extended substance or with the 
modern conception descending from the Cartesian idea,, we are vir- 
tually regarding a reaction against the splitting-up of existence into 
two opposed realms as helping to determine his course of thought. 
And it is not easy then to avoid a feeling that it was his rebound from 
that notion that eventuated in a limiting of existence to the one type. 
To repeat, that may be, in effect, what Spinoza does : but it is not why 
he does it. Unbiassed elucidation of his doctrine requires that we 
take the notions of essence and existence as the first terms in which 
he thought without attempting to identify this distinction with a set of 
ideas of different complexion. 

The correspondence of the order and connection of things to the 
order and connection of ideas is then a statement of the fact that for 
every existence there is an essence, discovered or discoverable, which 
is the truth of that existence, its explanation, definition — its law. 
Existence is governed by causal necessity; knowledge of existence is 
regulated by logical necessity. That which exists actually, exists 
necessarily; that which is thought with necessity is true. But we 
must not look for the order and connection in a cross-section of the 
series, but longitudinally as being derived from substance. There are 
two nexi: one causal, and of things, of actuality; the other logical, 
in verbal form a series of propositions. Both are derived from sub- 
stance. Consider the statement: "I said that God is the cause of an 
idea — for instance, of the idea of a circle — in so far as he is a thinking 
thing, simply because the actual being of the idea of a circle can only 
be perceived as a proximate cause through another mode of thinking, 
and that again through another, and so on to infinity; so that, as 
long as we consider things as modes of thinking, we must explain the 
order of the whole of nature, or the whole chain of causes, through the 
attribute of thought only."^^ This does not mean that God causes an 
idea (psychical or otherwise) in the usual sense of cause, but that God 
is the cause of the idea of the circle in the same sense as that the 
circle is the "cause" of certain other ideas which are geometrical deduc- 
tions from and consequences of the idea of a circle. The chain of 

" Ethics, Pt. 2, p. 7, note. 



46 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

natural, actual, causes corresponds to a sequence of propositions 
whose connections are logical; and if God or substance is the origin 
of the causal series, he is similarly the first principle, the source of 
coherence and order, in the logical series. The correspondence of 
idea and thing is comparable to the correspondence of the concept of 
a curve as expressed in the equation of the curve to that curve as 
actually existing or as described by a moving object. ^^ 

A brief consideration of Spinoza's classification of ideas and the 
treatment of error will substantiate our thesis. The distinction be- 
tween kinds and classes of ideas corresponds to the various kinds or 
degrees of knowledge. Three kinds of knowledge are enumerated — 
knowledge of imagination, or opinion, knowledge of reason, and 
knowledge of intuition. The first is knowledge based on confused or 
inadequate ideas, the two latter form knowledge of adequate and true 
ideas. Now it is noteworthy that these distinctions are based on 
logical, not psychological, considerations, and give evidence that 
Spinoza's scheme is logical. 

The test of the fictitious idea is logical. The chimera is a fiction 
the nature of which implies contradiction.^® Fictions in general are 
concerned only with the possible — that is, with things whose existence 
or non-existence would not imply a contradiction.^^ All fictitious 
ideas are deficient with respect to clearness and distinctness and sim- 
plicity, while the adequate idea, the logical essence, possesses just 
these qualities. All these signs by which we can detect the fictitious 
or confused ideas are logical qualities. And the same is true of the 
false idea, which "only differs from the fictitious idea in the fact of 
implying a mental assent." ^* 

Now all falsity consists in "the privation of knowledge, which inade- 
quate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve." ^^ Falsity is due to 
nothing positive in ideas ; ^^ it is due to an inadequacy, for the ade- 
quate idea is always true. ^^ "All confusion arises from the fact that 
the mind has only partial knowledge of a thing . . . and does not 
distinguish between the known and the unknown." ^^ And fictitious 
and false ideas are confused ideas. Thus, this confusion is the result 
of a privation in knowledge — or it may be called that privation itself. 

The point involved can be rendered as follows: the simple logical 
essence necessarily has its correlate in existence either actually or po- 
tentially. But the simple, adequate idea may be obscured by the pre- 
ss cj. De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 33. 

2« De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 17. 

" ibid, p. 16. 

28 ibid, p. 22. 

2» Ethics. Pt. 2, prop. 35- 

»o ibid, prop. 33. 

*' ibid, prop. 34- 

»2 De Intellectus Emendatione, p. 20. 



SPINOZA 47 

sentations of imagination, or the attainment of the idea hampered by 
the commingHng of images and the pure concept. The image is the 
product of two factors: the external stimulating "object" and the 
organism itself.^* 

Now while everything that happens in nature, happens of necessity, 
we can not always be sure that the conjunction of circumstances ne- 
cessary for the production of the given event actually occurs. The 
possibilities of such conjunctions, that is, the possibility of the thing's 
existence, must be ascertained from a scrutiny of the essence; its 
actuality can only be observed by "attending to the order of nature." 
Imagination is the instrument for knowledge of the occurrence of 
particular and mutable things. It is this latter type of knowledge 
which is subject to error; and in so far as the presentations of ima- 
gination prevent, or hinder, the work of understanding, or obscure the 
logical essence through alloying it with such presentations, we have 
error, fiction, and falsity. The images themselves, which are them- 
selves existents, do not contain error. "The mind does not err in the 
mere act of imagining, but only in so far as it is regarded as being 
without the idea." ^^ The presentations of imagination are confused 
and indistinct (in a logical sense, not psychologically). The concept 
or essence is distinct and necessarily true, since it has its correlate in 
actuality. It is not, therefore, the indistinctness of the imagination 
itself that is the source of error, but the confusion that results from 
failing to discriminate between the concept and the images. The 
concept, so to speak, is embedded in a mass of images of the manifold ; 
the idea in its simplicity and clearness is not given, but must be 
attained. Once attained, its true and necessary existence is given. 
In so far as we have not attained the concept in its clearness and dis- 
tinctness, to that extent we are deficient in knowledge, and are cor- 
respondingly in danger of error. Privation means deficiency with 
respect to something that belongs to the nature of the essence in the 
totality of its logical connections. Thus, I may have the idea of 
the circle, but I may not know the relation of the diameter to the 
circumference, and to that extent there is privation or deficiency 
in my knowledge, on account of which I may be led to make false 
affirmations. With further development of the understanding, this 
deficiency is eliminated. 

The fictitious, false, and inadequate ideas are logical confusions. 
The deficiency and confusion concern the logical, not the psychological, 
structure of the idea. Knowledge of the imagination, or opinion, is 
concerned with the presentations of particular and mutable things by 
the imagination ; while knowledge of reason and of intuition is knowl- 

" cf. Ethics, Pt. 2, props, is et SCQ, 
•« Ethics, Pt. 2, prop. 17, note. 



48 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

edge of the pure concept or essence freed from the trammels of the 
empirical manifold. 

True knowledge, which is knowledge of logical essences, is contrasted 
with that information of the manifold of experience which we attain 
through imagination. This contrast corresponds to a contrast in 
methods. For the method peculiar to the knowledge of essence is to 
be distinguished from that connected with the investigation of the 
flux of natural experience. In response to the questions of "J- B-" 
concerning the possibility of a method by means of which we can 
attain knowledge of the "most excellent things," and whether our 
mind is ruled by fortune rather than by art, Spinoza replies that 
"there must necessarily be a method whereby we are able to direct 
and concatenate our clear and distinct perceptions," and that "the 
mind is not, like the body, subject to chance." The only support 
needed for this, he avers, is the following consideration: "One clear 
and distinct perception, or several such taken together, can be abso- 
lutely the cause of other clear and distinct perceptions. Further- 
more, all the clear and distinct perceptions, which we form, can arise 
only from other clear and distinct perceptions, which are in us, nor 
do they admit of any other cause without us. Whence it follows that 
clear and distinct perceptions which we form depend upon the certain 
and fixed laws of our nature alone, that is, on our absolute power, not 
on fortune." ^^ It is evident that clearness and distinctness are logical 
characteristics of the moments of a pure, logical power of apprehension 
or mental vision. The clear and distinct perception of the concept 
of a square "causes" (and this alone can cause) the clear and distinct 
perception of (say) the incommensurability of diagonal and side. 
Spinoza has no intention of freeing the "soul" from the vicissitudes of 
chance by raising it above the causes which "although acting by cer- 
tain and fixed laws, are yet unknown to us." He is pointing to the 
fact of the mind's rational insight and its power of inference, and 
emphatically asserting his confident belief in the existence of a method 
whereby that capacity can operate successfully. In fact, it is easy to 
imagine Spinoza selecting geometry as vindicating his claim that 
there must be such a method and as illustrating his point that clear 
and distinct perceptions cause, and that they alone can cause, other 
clear and distinct perceptions. It is here, indeed, that the geometrical 
method is seen in its true significance. The geometrical method 
derives its importance for Spinoza from the fact that from his con- 
ception of the ordered system of essences flows a demand for such a 
method. His philosophical task, as viewed by him, points to a method, 
the most obvious example of which is to be found in geometry. 

Spinoza now proceeds to tell what the true method is and to contrast 

»6 Vol. 3, Epistola 37- 



SPINOZA 49 

it with the method applicable to the study of the manifold of experi- 
ence. "As for other perceptions, I admit that they depend in the 
largest part on fortune. Hence clearly appears, what the true method 
ought to be like, and what it ought especially to consist in — namely, 
solely in the cognition of the pure understanding, and its nature and 
laws. In order to acquire this, it is before all things necessary to dis- 
tinguish between the understanding and the imagination, or between 
true ideas and the rest, such as .the fictitious, the false, the doubtful, 
and absolutely all which depend solely on the memory. For under- 
standing these matters, as far as the method requires, there is no need 
to know the nature of the mind through its first cause; it is sufficient 
to put together a short history of the mind, or of perceptions, in the 
manner taught by Verulam." ^® The method of Bacon for empirical 
experience, but for final truths, the discernment of the logical essences 
in their eternal relation to their first cause, substance — this seems 
to be Spinoza's meaning. 

From this it is clear that Spinoza's theory of knowledge does not 
involve psychological considerations of the relations of idea and 
object. The problems that cluster about the correspondence of the 
psychical idea and the physical object are simply outside his universe 
of discourse. His classification of ideas and knowledge does not arise 
from the psychological characteristics of mental states, but from the 
logical properties of the idea. 

IV 

After this exposition of Spinoza's doctrine, let us turn specifically to 
the psychological analyses. We may thereby ascertain to what 
extent, if at all, Spinoza advocates a psychology in which the notion 
of the "psychical" or the "spiritual" (taking these terms in the sense 
of the usual contrast) plays a part. And if the outcome prove that 
the concept of the psychical or spiritual does not control his psycho- 
logical opinions, we may then seek confirmation of our theses in a 
negative way by enumerating some of the difficulties that ensue 
when the concept is forced upon him. The primary task in the dis- 
cussion before us is to examine the treatment of the idea and image, 
and their relation, from the standpoint of psychology. 

We may, therefore, begin with idea and image. A distinction 
between them runs through Spinoza's philosophy, and is as charac- 
teristic and as necessary as the corresponding distinction in Descartes; 
but Spinoza seems to maintain the distinction more consistently. 
The question inevitably arises in an effort to free the interpretation of 
Spinoza from the Cartesian meanings read into Spinoza's words, 

3« ibtd. 



50 IDEAANDESSENCE 

whether, that is, the distinction between image and idea in Spinoza is 
one and the same as the distinction in Descartes. Does the verbal 
identity express an identity of meaning? 

Now the differentiation of image and idea, of understanding (think- 
ing) and imagination, is, in Descartes, directly connected with the 
dualism of finite substances in the less general form of the dualism 
of mind and body in the human being. In fact, the contrast between 
image and idea in Descartes turns on the difference between the im- 
material soul state and the bodily state. Idea signifies something in, 
or an act of, the spiritual soul substance ; image denotes a process that 
is primarily a physiological process in the brain, with occasional at- 
tempts to connect it with the soul in some fashion that would bridge 
the gap between mind and body. If in Spinoza the doctrine of the 
duality of existence is really at the bottom of the distinction between 
the attributes of thought and extension, — that is, if Spinoza really 
starts from Cartesian results, — we should expect to find the Cartesian 
distinction between image and idea reproduced in Spinoza. It is 
our purpose, however, to disprove this. In Spinoza the distinc- 
tion is totally unanalogous to the Cartesian. The establishment of 
this claim retroactively corroborates the more general thesis. The 
more divergent the principles upon which the distinctions are made in 
the two cases, the more indisputable will be the claim that the two 
systems diverge radically in ways that are fundamental. 

For Spinoza, the image is purely a physiological process. It is a 
phenomenon of body, an event in the world of existence. That is, 
as the human being is an existent, and is a part of nature, the image 
is an occurrence of exactly the same general type as other happenings 
in the existential series. "The affections of the human body, of which 
the ideas represent external bodies as present to us, we will call the 
images of things, though they do not record the figures of things. 
When the mind contemplates bodies in this fashion, we say that it 
imagines." ^ "The mind imagines any given body, because the human 
body is affected and disposed by the marks (vestiguum) of an external 
body, in the same manner as it is affected when certain of its parts are 
set in motion by the said external body." ^ Imagery is the represen- 
tation of the empirical manifold of actuality, and the imagination is 
the organ of that representation. Images are bracketed with chimeras 
(whose nature is said to contain a manifest contradiction) and crea- 
tures of fancy, as not being realities at all.^ We represent things by 
means of the imagination, which is connected with brain-processes,* 
and brain-processes Spinoza thinks of in the customary phraseology 

^Ethics, Pt. 2, 17, note. 

i Ethics, Pt. 2, 16. 

' Cogitata Metaphysica, Vol. 4, Pt. I, ch. i. 

*ibid, pp. 188-189. 



SPINOZA 51 

of his day as movements of the animal spirits. Imagination, as we 
have already seen,^ is a natural process serving as an instrument in 
assisting the mind in the attainment of conceptions. 

Even in the Cogitata Metaphysicaj as has been pointed out, Spinoza 
apparently does not use thinking substance as equivalent to imma- 
terial substance, and, in fact, the latter term seems not to be used. 
He asserts that the notion of three souls, that of plants, of animals, 
and of man is an imaginary conception, for in matter there is nothing 
but mechanical forms and activities.^ It is noteworthy that Spinoza 
offers as the reason why the conception of three souls is imaginary 
the fact of the mechanical nature of matter. Furthermore, in the 
same connection he attributes life only to those beings that have a 
soul united with a body, which means that life is to be attributed to 
men, and perhaps to animals, but not to minds or God. Now the term 
here used for "soul" is anima;^ one can not resist the conclusion that 
soul here means for Spinoza a vital principle, something within the 
system of mechanical figures and textures, and not something akin to 
the spiritual substance of Descartes. Spinoza institutes an interesting 
contrast between mind and soul {mens and anima) by attributing life 
to a thing possessing a soul, but denying that life can be attributed 
to minds. Life he defines as the power by which things persist in 
their existence, in order to accommodate the meaning of the term 
to popular usage which attributes life to corporeal things not united 
with minds and to minds separated from bodies.^ The terms animus 
and spiritus do not appear to be used in the Cogitata Metaphysica^ 
except that spiritus appears in the sense of "animal spirits." 

These statements and uses of terms seem to imply that Spinoza is 
concerned with two conceptions: The first, that of the soul (anima) j 
the meaning of which is close to the primitive signification of the word 
and is free from psychological and metaphysical meanings; the 
second, that of mind (mens), which throughout the Cogitata Meta- 
physica seems to be related to essence. Mind is a class-name for the 
collection of concepts or essences as subjective, as known and pos- 
sessed by the human being; and also, perhaps, for the power or pos- 
sibility of having such essences. The possession of these concepts is 
what is signified by having a mind. It stands for the "forms" which 
are manifested or generated in the human being. Finally, the contexts 
do not give evidence that either word intends significations based 
upon the duality of substance as defined by Descartes. 

But now turn to the idea. "By idea, I mean the conception of the 
mind which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing." ^ To this 

* See above, pp. 67-68. 

• Cogitata Metaphysica, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, ch, 6. 
» ibid. 

^Ethics, Pt. 2, def. 3. 



52 IDEAANDESSENCE 

Spinoza adds the following explanation : "I say conception rather than 
perception, because the word perception seems to imply that the mind 
is passive in respect to the object; whereas conception seems to express 
an activity of the mind." By this Spinoza is affirming the logical 
meaning in which he is employing the term. He is distinguishing it 
from "idea" in the sense of "idea of perception," that is, ideas as pas- 
sively impressed upon the mind, coming in from the outside, or re- 
ceived in sense-perception. The conception expresses a logical func- 
tion of the mind. The matter might be stated as follows: the ques- 
tion of the origin or derivation of ideas or knowledge, the question of 
how the mind comes to be furnished with its ideas, in the Lockian 
sense, is either subordinate, or else entirely absent, from Spinoza's 
thought, at least in this connection. He is rather concerned with 
the logical worth of the conception. This is borne out by the definition 
immediately following, that of the adequate idea. The idea is ade- 
quate when, considered in itself, "without relation to the object," it 
"has all the properties or intrinsic marks of a true idea." The explana- 
tion appended declares that "intrinsic" is used "in order to exclude 
that mark which is extrinsic, namely, the agreement of the idea with 
its object (ideatum)." That is, the test of the adequacy of the idea is 
in the idea itself, to be found in its coherence with other elements in a 
system of conceptions, and not in a correspondence to an ideate. He 
distinguishes ideas from images in the statement : "For by ideas, I do 
not understand images such as are formed in the bottom of the eye, 
or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought." ^ Despite 
this assertion, Spinoza does occasionally use "idea" as equivalent to 
image, or at least as referring to a physiological process. Idea, in the 
De Emendatione, is even said to be "in itself nothing else than a certain 
sensation,"^® and Spinoza's account of sensation is certainly free from 
all implications of the "psychical," Here as in some other places the 
idea is given a physiological interpretation ; in short, it stands on the 
same level as the image. 

But we now seem in danger of losing the distinction between image 
and idea which was taken as a characteristic doctrine. But the danger 
is only apparent, not real. The point is that the psychological ac- 
count of idea and of thinking, in so far as Spinoza furnishes such an 
account, is of just the same nature as his account of image. It is a 
physiological process. As psychological fact, image and idea do not 
seem to differ at all. But the difference between them is derived from 
consideration of their cognitive function, their value in knowledge. 
From this view-point, the "idea" must be considered apart from all 
questions of its psychological nature. It means concept, but concept 

» ibid, p. 48, note. 
'"Vol. I, p. 24. 



SPINOZA 53 

not as a psychical entity, but as logical essence. It Is a logical entity, 
not a psychological entity. The Idea as concept Is not an existent of 
any sort. According to Pollock, definition for Spinoza was almost 
what now-a-days would be called scientific explanation. It is "an 
equation of Ideas corresponding to a constant relation between facts, 
and expressing the reduction of something unknown to terms of known 
elements." ^^ If definition is the essence explicitly formulated, then 
surely by idea Spinoza meant something more akin to the scholastic 
form than an entity or state of immaterial soul substance. 

It is the failure to recognize that the distinction between image 
and idea is of this nature that apparently is responsible for the opinion 
of Toennies (whose studies of Spinoza seem to be biassed by the errors 
of which so much has been said), that Propositions 5 et seq., of Part 2 
of the Ethics are in contradiction with Axiom 3 of the same book. He 
says of these propositions that "in unserer Sprache zu reden, unter 
dem Namen Ding jede physische, unter dem Namen Idee jede psy- 
chlsche Erscheinung begriffen werden soil. Hiermit steht freilich 
schon das dritte Axiom desselben zweiten Theiles in WIderspruch. 
Hier werden die Affecte als besondere modi cogitandi von den Ideen 
unterschieden und diese deutlich genug als Arten der Erkenntniss 
aufgefasst; welche Auffassung freilich festgehalten wird, aber so, dass 
jene anderen Thatsachen des psychischen Lebens zunachst ganzlich 
vergessen werden" ^^. Toennies seems to understand Spinoza as mean- 
ing In the axiom that affections like love and desire, as well as ideas, 
are psychical states; and then takes the dictum (Prop. 7) that "the 
order and connection of Ideas is the same as the order and connection 
of things" as standing for the parallelism of a psychical series to a 
material series. Taken so. It follows that Spinoza, in this statement 
of the parallelism, drops out of consideration all the elements of the 
psychical life save the ideas. To make up for this oversight, appa- 
rently. It would be necessary to revise Spinoza's dictum to read: "the 
order of Ideas, affections, etc., is the same as the order and connection 
of things" — which, as will appear later, would make nonsense of 
Spinoza's words. But if we recognize that by Idea in the axiom and 
the propositions referred to Spinoza does not mean psychological 
(much less psychical) facts at all, but logical essences, no such difficulty 
appears. 

We need not be content with this presumptuous emendation of 
Spinoza's dictum in refuting Toennies. We have, moreover, grounds 
for maintaining that the dictum contains only the term "Idea," for the 
reason that affections are processes in the region of things, of extension, 
of nature. They are as much physical events as the rising of the sun. 

" Pollock, Spinoza, His Life and Times, p. 147. 

12 Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Spinoza, Vierteljahresschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philoso- 
phic, Vol. 7t P- 159. 



54 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

And as events, they have their correlated ideas or logical essences. 
So that the dictum as it stands, instead of being deficient or incon- 
sistent, precisely embodies Spinoza's meaning. The order and con- 
nection of things, of existents, including therein affections and emo- 
tions, correspond to the order and connection of ideas. The point is 
forcefully corroborated by the opening sentences of Part 3 of the 
Ethics: "Most writers on the emotions and on the nature of human 
life seem to be treating rather of things outside nature than of things 
following nature's general laws. They appear to conceive man to be 
situated in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom : for they believe 
that he disturbs rather than follows nature's order." And later 
he adds : "Nature's laws and ordinances, according to which all things 
are and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always 
the same ; so that there should be one and the same method of under- 
standing the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's 
universal laws and rules. Thus the passions of hatred, anger, envy, 
and so on, considered in themselves, follow from this same necessity 
and power of nature; in like manner they answer to certain definite 
causes, through which they are understood, and possess certain 
properties as worthy of being known as the properties of anything 
else." These sentences, serving as preface to a treatise on the 
emotions, are unmistakable in meaning, unless we vitiate the mean- 
ing of the passage by making "nature" signify the duality of existence. 
Without importing this foreign element, it is clear that affections are 
processes in existence, which have in the world of knowledge (not the 
world of the psychical) their correlated logical processes. The entire 
note to Proposition 2 of this Part indicates that Spinoza advances a me- 
chanical conception of body and its states. "A mental decision and an 
appetite or determination of the body are simultaneous, or rather are 
one and the same thing, which we call decision, when it is regarded 
under and explained through the attribute of thought, and a deter- 
mination, when it is regarded under the attribute of extension, and 
deduced from the laws of motion and rest." Clearly we are dealing 
with one thing here, not two assigned to different worlds. 

Emotions are definitely ascribed to the body by their description as 
modifications of the body. "By EMOTION I mean the modifications 
of the body, whereby the power of acting of the body itself is increased 
or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modi- 
fications." ^^ Emotion is also called a passivity of the soul, or confused 
idea.^* The meaning of these phrases, and, in general, the reason why 
emotions are "ideas of the modifications of the body" are given in the 
following statement : "Now the power of the mind is defined by knowl- 

» Ethics, Pt. 3. def. 3. 

^* Ethics, Pt. 3i "General Definition of the Emotions." 



SPINOZA 55 

edge only, and its impotence or passion is defined by the privation of 
knowledge only."^^ To speak of emotions as confused or inadequate idea 
is to use an expression of logical, or cognitive, rather than psychological, 
import. Emotions "involve some clear and distinct conception," but 
the conception suffers from the obscuration characteristic of all 
confused and inadequate ideas.^^ And finally, it is worth nothing that 
the dictum of correspondence is formulated with especial reference to 
affectional states. "Even as thoughts and the ideas of things are 
ordered and associated in the mind, so are the modifications of the 
body or the images of things exactly in the same way ordered and 
associated in the body." ^^ And Spinoza does not say "order and 
connection of ideas, emotions, affections." 

The thesis of this essay receives a more or less indirect confirmation 
from Spinoza's polemic against the general idea or notion. His ac- 
count of the general notion demonstrates clearly that the "idea" in 
his terminology can not be identified with the general notion or 
abstract idea. These notions, he says, are due to the inability of the 
imagination to form distinctly more than a certain number of images 
at a time. When the imagination is overburdened with images, it 
"imagines all bodies confusedly without any distinction ;" ^^ and this 
is the origin of the general or abstract idea. Such notions are extremely 
confused and vary greatly from individual; they are adventitious, 
variable, dependent upon the chance variations in the experience of 
individual men. Evidently the infinite mode of thought or series of 
ideas is not an aggregation of these empirically derived, confused, 
variable notions, nor a collection of individual streams of such notions. 
They are but confused images, and it "is not to be wondered at, that 
among philosophers, who seek to explain natural things merely by 
the images formed of them, so many controversies should have arisen. "^^ 
The idea or pure concept is then a logical entity, wholly different in 
significance from the abstract ideas whose psychology has just been 
outlined. 

This leads us to Spinoza's distinction between an association of 
ideas, which is the principle of memory, and a second association of 
ideas, which arises from the order of the intellect. A comparison of 
the two kinds of associations illustrates both the physiological charac- 
ter of the Spinozistic psychology and the purely logical character of 
the "idea." Memory is "nothing else than a certain association {con- 
catenatio) of ideas involving the nature of things outside the human 
body, which association follows in the mind according to the order 

16 Ethics, Pt. s. prop. 20, note. 
" Ethics, Pt. S. prop. 4, corol. 
1^ ibid, prop. i. 

'^^ Ethics, Pt. 2, prop. 40, note i. 
" ibid. 



56 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

and association of the modifications (affecHones) of the human body. 
I say, first, it is an association of those ideas only (tantum), which 
involve the nature of things outside the human body; not of ideas 
which answer to (explicant) the nature of the said things: ideas of 
the modifications of the human body are, in truth, those which involve 
the nature both of the human body and of external bodies. I say, 
secondly, that this association follows according to the order and 
association of the modifications of the human body, in order to dis- 
tinguish it from the association of ideas, which follows according to 
the order of the intellect, whereby the mind perceives things through 
their primary causes, and which is in all men the same." ^^ One kind 
of ideas, involving the nature of outside things, is associated according 
to the order and connection of bodily modifications; this is memory, 
the order and association being evidently conceived in what we 
should call physiological terms. Compare the statement in which 
imagination is said to be "the idea by means of which the mind con- 
templates a thing as present ; yet this idea indicates rather the present 
constitution of the human body than the nature of the external 
thing." 2^ This sort of association of ideas is that which corresponds 
to inadequate knowledge, confused ideas — "hearsay," "mere experi- 
ence," and perhaps is responsible for, or represents, inadequate infer- 
ence. The ideas thus associated depend upon both the human body 
and outside things; this seems to mean simply that the physiological 
process is a function of two things, stimulus and bodily conditions. 
Now this set of ideas and manner of ordering ideas are in sharp contrast 
with ideas which answer to, or explain, the nature of the things outside, 
and this association arises from the order of the intellect. Here we 
are no longer in the domain of psychology, but of knowledge. These 
ideas, which, perhaps as psychological phenomena, would probably 
receive a physiological explanation similar to that given the other set, 
are cognitively the logical essences of things, and their connection is 
ideal and logical. The contrast is thus stated between connections 
of fact and connections of a logical nature. The use of the term "idea" 
in both instances is not a matter of terminological inconsistency, or 
a sign of a parallelistic hypothesis in the mind of the writer, unless we 
do violence to its intention by forcing such extraneous considerations 
upon the passage. 

A search for an unmistakable enunciation of the theory of existence 
as dual, or of the principle of psychophysical parallelism, or finally of 
the spiritual status of the idea, would naturally lead to the work in 
which Spinoza is commenting on the philosophy of Descartes. But 
even in the Cogitata Metaphysica where, if anywhere, we should expect 

^^ Ethics, Pt. 2, p. i8, note (italics mine). 
" Ethics, Pt. 5. p. 34. 



SPINOZA 57 

to find prominent the duality of existence and its resultant psycho- 
logical conceptions, Spinoza's teaching is fairly free from oppor- 
tunities for misconstructions in terms of a spiritualistic psychology. 
Other things being equal, Spinoza is in accord with Hobbes. The ensu- 
ing quotations are as illuminating as any that could be selected. 
"Finally, entity of the mind {ens rationis) is nothing more than a mode 
of thinking, which renders easier the retaining, explaining, and ima- 
gining of known things. Herewith is to be noted, that by mode of 
thinking we understand . . .all affections of thought, such as 
understanding (intellectus) , joy, imagination, etc." ^^ This statement 
assigns understanding and emotion to the same level as memory and 
imagination. Now we find shortly after that "imagination is indeed 
nothing else than to feel those traces which appear in the cerebrum 
because of the motion of the spirits which are excited in the senses by 
objects." 2^ It is evident that Spinoza has in mind the common notion 
of animal spirits, and that this is the leading idea in his physiological 
psychology. And furthermore, so far as these statements go, under- 
standing is as much a physiological process as memory, imagination, 
and emotion. 

Let us recall at this point Spinoza's distinction between ens rationis, 
modus cogitandiy and idea. The first is described as a mode of thinking, 
and we have seen that joy and understanding are cited as such modes. 
Now the modes of thinking are not ideas, for only the idea has an 
ideate which necessarily exists or can exist. But Spinoza asserts 
emphatically that the division of being into ens reale and ens rationis 
is illegitimate and a source of error among the "verbal philosophers." 
The true division is between being whose essence necessarily involves 
existence and that which involves existence only in possibility, but not 
necessarily. This division, however, does not parallel the division 
into real entities and entities of the mind. We can not say that real 
entity corresponds to entity which necessarily exists and that entity 
of the mind corresponds to entity which may, but does not necessarily, 
exist. Let us, therefore, put aside, following Spinoza's own injunction, 
the division into ens reale and ens rationis. There remains, however, 
something that Spinoza thinks can correctly be termed ens rationis — 
what is it? We learn that if we mean by the words the modes of think- 
ing, they are real entities; but as real entities they are not ideas, are 
neither true nor false, but can only be called, like love, good or bad. 
On the other hand, if we signify by the phrase something other than 
the modes of thinking, it is pure nothingness. That is, what we should 
call "mental entity" is pure nothingness; there is no such kind of 
entity or existence. By "mental entity" we must mean either an idea, 

22 Cogitata Metaphysica, Vol. 4, Pt. i, ch. i 

23 ibid. 



58 IDEAANDESSENCE 

that is, an essence, a pure logical function, or else we must mean think- 
ing processes themselves. The first use of these words Spinoza de- 
plores, for he specifically states that mental entities are not ideas. 
But granting the first usage, as idea, nothing psychological, much less 
anything spiritual or psychical, is intended. In the second, a usage 
which Spinoza seems inclined to admit, as thinking process, we have 
something which is a natural process in existence and has just been so 
described. 

But what then is fictitious entity? It is not to be confounded (as 
many do confound it) with the ens rationis, asserting that it "has no 
existence outside of the mind;" for this assertion presupposes precisely 
that distinction between ens rationis and ens reale which has just been 
discarded as invalid. Finally, the ens fictum is not a mode of thinking 
like imagination or understanding. It is simply a union of terms 
{terminus) effected in an arbitrary manner by the will alone without any 
reason for so doing. The ens rationis, on the contrary, depends 
neither on the will, nor consists of a uniting of different terms. Spino- 
za's thought in these difficult passages ^^ may be summarized as fol- 
lows : modes of thinking such as imagination are real entities, for they 
are processes in nature; they are not ideas, but as real entities have 
their corresponding essences or concepts, their definitions and "scien- 
tific" causal explanations. Fictions, from the standpoint of knowledge, 
are unclear^and indistinct ideas, and are worthless cognitively; but 
as "psychological" facts they are arbitrary combinations of the pre- 
sentations of imagination and sense, — facts, therefore, of nature and 
human nature. Logically and cognitively they are not knowledge 
and do not represent anything. As facts, with reference to their 
causes, they are products of will and imagination. With reference 
to knowledge, the chimera differs from the fiction, for the former 
involves a manifest contradiction and can not possibly be true; the 
latter is rather characterized by unclearness and indistinctness, and 
may be true. But as psychological facts, chimera and fictions are on 
the same basis. As we have seen, they are brain-processes, for ima- 
gination is the operation of the animal spirits in the cerebrum. The 
true point at issue in this whole discussion is, as Spinoza indicates, 
the confining of the meaning of entity of the mind to modes of thinking, 
and the rejection of any other meaning, together with the whole 
scheme of thought represented by the division of entities into real and 
mental. 

Spinoza then proceeds to carry out his division of being. The 
being of essence {esse essentiae) is being whose essence involves exis- 
tence; it is "nothing else than that mode under which created things 
are comprehended in the attributes of God." Being of idea {esse 

** cf. Cogitata Metaphysica, Vol. 4. ch. i, pp. 189-190. 



SPINOZA 59 

ideae) is being in so far as everything is contained objectively (objective) 
in the idea of God. Being of possibiHty (esse potentiae) refers to the 
power of God, by which He could create all things not yet existing 
from his absolute liberty of will. Being of existence {esse existentiae) 
is the essence itself of things considered as outside God and in them- 
selves, and is apportioned to things after they have been created by 
God.^^ These kinds of being, including the esse potentiae, are sep- 
arated only in things, but in no wise in God. Now what we have called 
the system of logical essences or concepts, the body of truth, which 
forms the thought attribute is evidently what Spinoza intends by esse 
ideae. The term "objective" in Spinoza has a meaning almost the 
inverse of what the term now means. But if we put "subjective" in its 
place in the definition of esse ideae, it must be noted that esse ideae 
refers to everything as contained in the idea of God, not as contained 
in, or dependent on, a knowing finite mind. The supplanting of one 
term by the other does not make, and should not be allowed to make, 
the esse ideae a matter of the knowing subject, knowing consciousness, 
or psychical knowing soul. The "subject" implied is the idea of God. 
So that esse ideae means everything in so far as the "ideas" or concepts 
of things depend upon, or are contained in, the idea of God. The 
esse essentiae looked upon as the body of rational truth or knowledge, 
but aside from all question as to the particular knowing subject, is the 
esse ideae. Being of idea of a thing, therefore, stands for the logical 
essence of the thing taken in its systematic and logical relation to the 
idea, or thought essence, of God. The parallelism of the modes of 
the attributes as knowledge or truth is a parallelism of logical essences 
{esse ideae) to the system of things, the existential series, that is, esse 
existentiae. Basically the distinction is one between form (essence) 
and matter (existence, actuality), as Spinoza himself indicates.^^ From 
this summary it appears, consequently, that by "idea" Spinoza has 
no thought of signifying some entity of a psychological nature, and 
still less to denote a psychical fact of any sort. The division of being 
is logical, not psychological. His explicit rejection of the notion of 
mental entity, save in the one sense of a mode of thinking such as 
understanding and imagination, which are natural phenomena like 
sunset or sunrise, evinces his impatience with distinctions between 
existences based on psychological considerations. 

Having examined the Cogitata Metaphysica with a view to discover- 
ing grounds for credence in Spinoza's putative inclination towards 
psychophysical parallelism or the Cartesian dual view of existence, 
let us next consider the Short Treatise. A translator of this work 
finds in it the "first formulation of the Law of Parallelism which plays 

'5 cf. Cogitata Metaphysica, Pt. i, ch. 2. 

^Cogitata Metaphysica, Vol. 4, Pt. i, ch. 2, last paragraph. 



60 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

such a prominent part in the psychology of to-day. "^^ If this can be 
substantiated, doubt is thrown upon the thesis of this essay. On the 
contrary, however, it is not difficult to demonstrate that this "discov- 
ery" is a good example of the common fallacy in Spinozistic exegesis. 
A brief survey of the discussion of soul and body, idea and under- 
standing, given in the treatise is sufficient to vindicate this claim. 

In its general theses, the Short Treatise is not at variance with the 
three other works that have been considered. Essence and existence 
are its dominating concepts. In minor points there are differences. 
Thus the distinction between entia rationis and entia realia is appa- 
rently accepted. The former seems to comprise elements, such as 
images, not included under the term in what was regarded as a pos- 
sible legitimate use in the Cogitata Metaphysica. For "some things 
being in our understanding and not in Nature, and so these alone 
being also only our own work, they serve to understand things dis- 
tinctly; among them we comprehend all relations which have refer- 
ence to several objects; and these we call Entia Rationis." ^^ But 
Spinoza evidently does not mean by entia rationis anything incon- 
sistent with the psychological view-point that has been described. 

Truth reveals itself.^^ The highest type of thought is a rational 
intuitive comprehension that has no need of discursive thinking.^^ 
Understanding is a name we give to "all the ideas which every one has," 
and of which we "make a whole." ^^ By idea Spinoza means essence. 
He distinguishes between ideas which arise necessarily from the reality 
of things, together with the essence in God, and the ideas which ex- 
hibit to us the things now existing by their effects on us. This dis- 
tinction is made in connection with the statement that, "Between the 
Idea and the object there must necessarily be a union, since the one 
can not be without the other; for there is no thing the idea of which 
is not in the thinking thing and no idea can be unless the thing also 
exists." ^^ This statement refers only to the first of the two kinds of 
ideas enumerated. The reason is clear, for we can have ideas of things, 
that is, images, without the thing itself existing. Understanding is 
consequently a name for the collection of essences — the whole of ideas 
which every one has. 

Now the crucial question is this : are Spinoza's remarks concerning 
body and soul capable of being construed as an expression of a dual- 
istic view, in such a sense that a contrast of spiritual and physical 
aspects of existence, or a statement of the Law of Parallelism, is 
implied? It must be admitted that he constantly conjoins the terms 

^'' God, Man, and Human Welfare, Open Court Publishing Co., 1909, Translator's note, p. 120. 

^^ Korte Verhandeling, Vol. 4, p. 35. 

^'ibid, p. 61. 

'o ibid, p. 39. 

" ibid, p. 19. 

« ibid, p. 78, note. 



SPINOZA 6l 

"body" and "soul," and the terms indicate some sort of distinction or 
difference of point of view. The question is, what sort? And does the 
distinction amount to a dualism, or is it largely a matter of verbal 
convenience? 

What has Spinoza to say about the soul? "This knowledge, idea, 
etc., of each particular thing which actually comes to be is, we say, 
the soul {ziel) of this particular thing." ^^ But every particular thing 
is a certain proportion of motion and rest, we are told, and these we 
call bodies; the difference between bodies is the difference between 
their respective proportions of motion and rest.^^ "Out of these pro- 
portions of motion and rest comes also actually to be this body of ours ; 
of which, then, not less than of all other things, knowledge, an Idea, 
etc., must be in the thinking thing, and, therefore, our soul also."^^ 
The idea of the body, of any body, is the soul of that body. Does the 
statement imply anything more than that every existing thing has an 
essence or idea which it embodies, or actualizes, and that what we 
are pleased to call "our soul" is simply the essence, knowledge, or idea, 
(the form?), of what we are pleased to call "our body?" So far nothing 
unique is attributed to "our body ; " it is not exceptional in possessing 
a soul — everything, as Spinoza says, has a soul. A triangle, for ex- 
ample, has a soul, namely, the concept or logical entity which is its 
truth. And furthermore, the soul-ideas of various bodies seem to 
be on the same level. 

As the body changes continually, so does its idea or cognition in the 
thinking thing.^^ But this can hardly be twisted into an assertion that 
for every bodily change there is a corresponding "mental" or "psychical" 
change, that there is a parallelism of two different and contrasted 
series. For that would make nonsense of what has just been written 
by Spinoza. Perhaps Spinoza's real meaning can be clarified by an 
analogy. Suppose we draw a curve, say a parabola; corresponding 
to the moments of the curve are the moments of its equation as it is 
explicated, but the changes in the curve follow a law, are within 
limits. So as the body changes, "ours" or any other, so does its 
"equation," its soul. But the changes are within limits, for if the 
proportion of motion and rest passes certain bounds, the result is 
death.^^ When we are aware of the changes in "our body," we have 
feeling. ^^ 

It would require some ingenuity to read out of these statements 
real support for the contention that Spinoza is writing about the Law 
of Parallelism. It is not difficult, however, to see that he is concerned 

33 ibid, p. 37, note 6. 
^ ibid, p. 37, notes 7 and 8. 
35 ibid, p. 37, note 9. 
^^ibid, p. 37, note 10. 
3' ibid, p. 37, note 14. 
38 ibid, p. 37, note 13. 



62 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

with the correlation of the logical essence or truth of a thing with the 
thing as existent. And it must be contended that this correlation 
can not be identified with the parallelism between spiritual soul-state 
and the physical body-process. 

Question may arise, however, concerning the thinking thing in 
which the idea-souls of things are said to be. Now the thinking thing 
can not be the "soul" (however we may wish to define it). For, first, all 
existing things have souls; and secondly, the soul, since it is the idea 
of the thing, is the very entity that is said to be in the thinking thing. 
This thinking thing appears to be the thought attribute, and in final 
analysis, God or Substance. No attribute is in man which was not 
first to be found in nature; as a mode of the attributes of God, his 
soul, or idea, or cognition (to use terms as juxtaposed by Spinoza) is 
in God, the thinking thing, which is to say, God as essence, as truth.^* 
All that man possesses of thought are modes of the thinking attribute 
ascribed to God.'*'^ In this lies the eternity of the soul. 

So far our citations have been statements, metaphysical in meaning, 
affording little latitude for psychological interpretation. We can now 
turn to those statements which seem more susceptible to interpre- 
tations at variance with the thesis of this essay. 

In a note on the Will *^ Spinoza refers to a union of body and soul 
such as is commonly assumed by philosophers. But he does not 
inform us what sort of a union that is. Further, he refers to it only 
for the sake of argument. Conceivably this may mean that he has 
in mind the Cartesian type of body-soul union, but this, however, can 
be only a conjecture, since he himself says nothing more of it. 

It is in the chapter "Our Blessedness," where the problem of moral 
control, freedom from the passions, and evil are of primary interest, 
that the statements occur which are most susceptible to the "parallel- 
istic" version. "The chief effect of the other attribute (the thinking 
attribute) is an idea (Begrip) of things so that when it (the thinking 
attribute?) comes to conceive them, either love or hate, etc., will arise 
therefrom. This effect, then, since it does not bring extension with it, 
can not be ascribed to extension, but only to the thinking (attribute) ; 
so that the cause of all the changes, which arise in this mode, must be 
sought, not in extension, but only in the thinking thing." ^^ In the 
translation of the Short Treatise referred to above, this passage is 
translated as follows: "The most important effect of the other at- 
tribute (thought) is such a comprehension of things that after the soul 
conceives them, either love, hate, or some other passion will arise. 
Since this effect does not involve extension, it (the effect) can not be 

" ibid, p. 79, note. 
*o ibid, p. 37. 
*^ ibid. p. 63, note 2. 
« ibid. p. 73. 



SPINOZA 63 

ascribed to that extension, but only to thought, so that the cause of 
all the changes which occur in this mode (the mode of thought) must 
by no means be sought in extension, but only in the thinking thing." ^^ 
In a note appended to this remark, the translator asserts that the 
statement is "the first formulation of the Law of Parallelism which 
plays such a prominent part in the psychology of to-day." Before 
commenting upon this, it is advisable to place Spinoza's words in their 
context. 

In the immediately preceding paragraphs, Spinoza is interested in 
showing that in extension there is nothing but motion and rest, and 
that only through motion and rest can motion and rest be changed. 
It follows that "no mode of thinking in the body can bring about either 
motion or rest." *^ Then he proceeds to point out that the direction 
of the motion of a body may change, just as I might stretch out my 
arm, and thereby bring to pass that the spirits (geesten) which had 
their motion in one direction change it to another direction, accord- 
ing to the "form of the spirits." "The cause of this is . . . that 
the soul (ziel)f being an Idea of the body, is united with the same in 
such a manner that it and the body taken together form one whole." 
Now the term geest Spinoza uses in the plural. In the translation just 
referred to, the following note is appended to the term "spirits" by 
which geesten is rendered : "Schaarschmidt inserts Lehens in parenthe- 
sis, '(Lebens) Geister', i.e., life-spirits. It is obvious here that Spinoza 
means by this concrete figure the spiritual aspect of existence which 
in other places he calls 'thought' or 'consciousness'" (p. 119). The 
reader is referred back to this note in the next chapter where the 
term is again used in the plural.^^ 

But is it credible that these passages contain a formulation of the 
Law of Parallelism or that Spinoza intends by "spirits" the spiritual 
aspect of existence, or consciousness? In the first place, he has just 
denied that anything but motion and rest can effect a change in exten- 
sion. So if geesten means anything akin to the psychical, or spirit 
in the sense defined by the old dualism, that is, something of a nature 
opposed to extension, the later statement that the spirits can change 
the direction of motion is in contradiction with the earlier statement. 
In objection to this accusation of contradiction, the following defense 
may be offered: it may be said that in the later passage Spinoza 
asserts merely that the spirits can change the direction, but not the 
amount, of motion, so that there is no contradiction. But this seems 
to be a devious and laborious method of avoiding the obvious signifi- 
cation of the term geesten in favor of ideas imported into Spinoza's 

^God, Man, and Human Welfare, p. 120. 
*<Vol. 4, p. 73. 

*5 God, Man, and Human Welfare, p. 129, translator's note. cf. Spinoza's note, Van V. and L., Vol. 
4. P- 77, pp. 82-83. 



64 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

thought. Schaarschmidt's emendation is obviously correct. Here as 
elsewhere Spinoza is utilizing the familiar conception of "animal 
spirits." ^® Only by a violent distortion can these statements be 
regarded as having anything to do with parallelism. 

We have then four terms: soul, spirits, idea of the body (as soul of 
the body), and body. Now if Spinoza is not writing in terms of the 
parallelism of psychical mode to physical mode, one might fairly ask, 
what sort of distinction does he draw between soul, spirits, idea, and 
body? The soul (ziel) is spoken of as changing the direction of the 
movements of the spirits (p. 74) ; and influence of body on soul and 
of soul on body is considered (p. 74). That the soul and the body 
have no relation (community, gemeenschap) with each other is also 
claimed (p. 78). All these remarks need explication. 

Now in connection with these statements and in defense of our posi- 
tion a general observation is apposite; namely, that a distinction be- 
tween body and soul does not necessarily mean a distinction of the type 
defined by a dualism of substances. We need not assume that every 
one after Descartes who uses the terms "soul" or "spirit" or "thought" 
has Descartes's spiritual substance in mijid. 

The uncertainties that attach to Spinoza's discussions of the soul 
in the Short Treatise originate in the fact that the term is employed 
in several senses. The various significations of the term are not all 
specifically defined, but they can be discriminated. First, by "soul" 
is meant the essence or idea of an existent. In this sense a soul is 
defined as the idea or cognition of a body. Secondly, "soul" is on 
occasion equivalent to thinking power or faculty ; it is a name denoting 
the concrete psychological fact that thinking goes on, a name for an 
activity of the organism; to have a soul (in this employment of the 
word) is almost equivalent to the vernacular expression, "to have 
brains." Thirdly, soul seems to stand for a vital principle governing 
the functions of the body, the source of its energies. In the second 
and third senses the term is applicable only to animate beings, perhaps 
only to human beings. But in the first meaning it applies to every 
existent without exception. 

Correspondingly there are three ways of drawing a distinction 
between soul and body. First, soul and body are distinguished as 
essence from existence, as form from matter, as mode from mode, but 
not as substance from substance. In these terms, soul and body may 
be said to have nothing in common, for they are as diverse as the 
thinking and extended attributes. The differentiation is metaphysical. 

Secondly, soul and body are separated as power or function or 
capacity from that which possesses this capacity or that in which this 
function resides. Soul in this signification of the word, however, is a 

<« cf. Ethics, Pt. 2, prop, i?- 



SPINOZA 65 

going-on in existence — it is in the world of extension, so to speak. This 
differentiation is psychological. The fact of thinking is, therefore, 
causally to be explained in terms of the physiological conception most 
available at that time, namely, the notion of "animal spirits." To 
state that the soul directs the flow of the animal spirits would no more 
imply the spirituality of the soul than the statement that the brain 
exercises a control over the flow of nerve-currents would imply the 
spirituality of the brain. 

Thirdly, a distinction between soul as vital principle and the body 
as its instrument. Soul is to be thought of as a sort of active principle 
informing the body, guiding the operations of the animal spirits. 
But here soul is as physiological as body. 

Now it is the oscillations between these various meanings that are 
largely responsible for the apparent inconsistencies to be found in 
the Short Treatise, particularly in Chapters 19 and 20 of Part 2. 
Spinoza's problem inevitably requires such changes in the employ- 
ment of the term. For he is interested in establishing his deepest 
conviction that clear and distinct ideas, true knowledge, will enable 
us to control the passions. He is obliged, consequently, to relate the 
soul, on the one hand, to knowledge of essence; while, on the other 
hand, it must be connected with the organism, as an informing, con- 
trolling principle that can be affected by the body and can in turn 
affect it. For knowledge is knowledge of essence; and passions are 
bodily changes. The metaphysical point of view shifts to the psycho- 
logical or physiological, and the latter is forsaken in turn for the 
metaphysical. The transition is through the fact of cognition. For 
the passions are connected with opinion (p. 71, note), and human 
welfare, which signifies release from the passions, is secured only by 
the highest form of knowledge. Such knowledge involves a penetra- 
tion by the soul as cognitive intuitive power of the infinite realm of 
essence so that man may be identified with God, with Substance, with 
completed reality. We must know God, and then we shall be united 
with him. We need not know him completely, for a partial knowledge 
of him will lead to that union with him which is our blessedness and 
is knowledge of "the most excellent things." Spinoza points out that 
we do not know fully our own body, yet we are intimately united with 
it and have great love for it (p. 81). The real issue is thus clarified: 
how are we to attain to such a knowledge of God as will effect the 
transfer of our love for our body, that is, for the contingent and the 
transient, to God, to the Universal and the Eternal? The union can 
be brought about only through knowledge of essence, and the knowl- 
edge of essence must in some fashion exert a control over the passions. 
It is this problem which necessitates Spinoza's shifting from the meta- 
physical and epistemological world of discourse to that of psychology 



66 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

and physiology .^^ Only on some such basis as this can we appreciate 
that the seemingly glaring inconsistencies in Spinoza's language are 
apparent, not genuine. 

There are certain conclusions that this discussion discloses. The 
chief is this : in no case does the differentiation of "body" from "soul" 
force upon us the belief that Spinoza intends to set over against a 
corporeal, extended, material body an incorporeal, psychical, or spiri- 
tual soul. Soul does not mean consciousness as a series of psychical 
mental states or spiritual entities in opposition to a series of physical 
events, or the spiritual, as opposed to the physical, aspect of existence. 

As a final corroboration of the thesis, let us turn to the Appendix of 
the treatise, where Spinoza seeks to "express the essence of the soul." 

First of all we learn that the soul has its origin in the body, that its 
changes depend alone upon the body, and in this consists the union 
of body and soul (p. 96). Further "in extension there are no other 
modifications than motion and rest . . . the human body is 
nothing other than a certain proportion of motion and rest. The 
objective essence, then, of which the real proportion is in the thinking 
attribute is, we say, the soul of the body; so whenever one of these 
two modifications changes to more or less (motion or rest) so is the 
idea too changed in a similar degree" (p. 99). "Seeing that for the 
real existence of an idea (or objective essence) no other thing is re- 
quired except the thinking attribute and the object (or formal essence), 
it is certain . . . that the idea, or objective essence, is the most 
immediate modification of the attribute. In the thinking attribute, 
therefore, there can be given no other modification which can belong 
to the essence of the soul of a similar (every?) thing, than only the 
idea of such an actually existing thing, which must necessarily be in 
the thinking attribute : for such an idea brings with itself the other 
modifications. Love, Desire, etc." (pp. 96-97). "If we should go on 
to ascribe to the essence of the soul that by means of which alone it 
can really exist, we would be able to find nothing other than the attri- 
bute and the object of which we have just spoken; and neither of 
these can belong to the essence of the soul, since the object has nothing 
of Thinking and is distinguished actually from the soul . 
Therefore, then, the essence of the soul consists alone in this, namely, 
in the being of an Idea or objective essence in the thinking attribute, 
arising from the essence of an object, which indeed actually exists in 
Nature. I say of an object which actually exists without more particu- 
larity, in order to comprehend herein not only the modifications of 
extension, but also the modifications of all the infinite attributes, 
which likewise have a soul, as well as extension" (p. 97). 

Certainly this account can be regarded as dealing with spiritual 

" cf. ch. 22. 



SPINOZA 67 

existence, or aspect of existence, only by doing violence to its spirit 
and direct expression. The idea is represented as the formal essence, 
a logical thought entity. Existence is confined to extension, or to 
extension and attributes other than the attribute of thought. The 
essence of the soul is just its being an idea in the thinking attribute. 
The idea-object correlation is the correspondence of the essence with 
the existent: and this correlation is the relation of soul and body, in 
the metaphysical and epistemological sense. 

The end of thinking is to bring forth "an infinite Idea, which com- 
prehends objectively (voorwerpelijk) in itself the whole of Nature, such 
as it actually is in itself" (p. 96). The possession of this infinite idea 
is the highest estate of the soul — or rather, it is the soul in its sub- 
sumption under the attribute of thought, the soul as united with God. 
It is at this point of our discussion that we can comprehend Spinoza's 
"thinking being" and its relation to the soul. The thinking being in 
nature is a single thing, "which is expressed in infinite Ideas, according 
to the infinite things which are in Nature" (p. 79). This single thinking 
thing is the attribute of thought, it is God as thought. If we apply 
to essence the distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata^ 
the essences present themselves in twofold guise. On the one hand, 
God as thought or essence, corresponding to natura naturans; on the 
other hand, the infinite number of essences, the idea-souls of the 
infinite numbers of things, corresponding to natura naturata. The 
soul as essence is thus on the one hand an essence amid an infinite 
number of essences; on the other, it is in God, as Supreme Essence. 
The duty of thinking is to attain such a comprehension of essences 
that their unity is envisaged, that the soul can know itself as essence 
contained in the infinite essence. Since the idea which is the soul of 
a thing "can find no rest in the knowledge of the body without passing 
over to the knowledge of that without which the body and the idea 
itself can neither be nor be conceived, so the soul becomes imme- 
diately united by love to this latter" (p. 82). Thereby we are united 
in love with the "incorporeal subject," and this is our second birth, 
our regeneration (p. 82). 

Finally, we are in a position to comment correctly upon Spinoza's 
use of the words "spirit" (geest used in the singular), and "incorporeal." 
The corporeal and the incorporeal, the flesh and the spirit, are con- 
trasted (p. 83). Is this, then, a lapse into Cartesian dualistic modes of 
thought? The answer is that we are by no means compelled to assume 
this. These distinctions are primarily moral, as the context shows, 
not metaphysical. But the distinction between the corporeal and the 
incorporeal might be drawn by Spinoza as a metaphysical distinction 
without involving the dualistic view so often imputed to him. For the 
essences are incorporeal, like the medieval forms. The incorporeal 



68 IDEAANDESSENCE 

subject is God as Essence or Truth. This means the ideality of 
essence and of God as Essence. To become attached to incorporeal 
things signifies that we apprehend and are in union with the per- 
durable essences and truths of things and are free from the trammels 
of the contingent and transient. The spiritual being of the soul for 
Spinoza means that the soul is in union with God, with the infinite 
and eternal, that it has attained the clearest vision of rational insight. 
It is the soul suh quadam specie aeternitatis . What man has of thought, 
that is what we are to denote by "soul." In the sphere in which 
Spinoza's mind is moving, the familiar dualisms between body and 
soul, spirit and matter, the psychical and the physical, conscious state 
and physiological process, the world of spiritual existence and the 
world of material existence, have no place, no relevancy. To interpret 
his doctrine on a basis of such dual conceptions obscures the genuine 
difficulties of his system beneath a cloud of problems alien to the world 
of his thought, and, therefore, in reference to his doctrine, extrinsic 
and artificial. 

There is, however, one other point that might be appealed to in 
defense of the position that has been the object of attack. It is this: 
Spinoza repudiates the notion that mind sets body in motion and 
asserts that such statements are merely verbal and empty of meaning.^^ 
Now this may be by some called a repudiation of interactionism and, 
therefore, a tacit admission of the theory of the dual character of 
existence. From this, then, might be derived some indirect justifica- 
tion for the "parallelistic" interpretation of Spinoza. But this need 
not give us pause. For to Spinoza, construed as we have understood 
him, interaction of mind and body would not merely be as impossible 
as it would be were he the most stubborn of modern parallelists, but 
more, it would be senseless. Mind, as the thought attribute, or series 
of logical essences, or truth, could in no sense be looked upon as inter- 
acting with body; for it is impossible to understand how anything 
but an existent could interact with an existent. One might as well 
talk of the concept of a triangle interacting with the triangle drawn 
upon the blackboard. Besides, a denial that mind influences body 
cuts two ways: it may just as well depend on a disbelief in a sub- 
stantial spiritual principle and an adherence to a psychology like that 
of Hobbes as on an advocacy of a two-substance theory. Spinoza's 
statement might legitimately, perhaps, be held as a rejection of Des- 
cartes's position that the mind could direct the flow of the animal 
spirits; and yet the rejection might be regarded as resulting from a 
negation of the doctrine of the dualism of existence rather than follow- 
ing from an acceptance of that doctrine. 

It is worth pointing out that in the Short Treatise, as has been shown, 

« cf. Ethics, Pt. 3. P- 2, and note. 

\ 



SPINOZA 69 

Spinoza does speak of the soul as changing the direction of the animal 
spirits. Is this then in contradiction with the statement from the 
Ethics? It need not be so taken. In the former work the term "soul" 
{ziel) is favored, if not exclusively used, in discussions of the influence 
of the soul on the body and of body on the soul. In the section of the 
Ethics just referred to, the term used is "mind" {mens). Now we have 
observed that "soul" is employed in more than one sense in the treatise. 
In one acceptation, it stands for idea or cognition ; and in this sense it is 
what Spinoza elsewhere calls "mind." It was observed, further, that 
in other employments of the term there was no difficulty in under- 
standing that the soul could direct the spirits. The soul as an activity 
of the organism, or as the vital principle, could be conceived as oper- 
ating in this fashion without encountering any of the dualistic stum- 
bling-blocks. There is, then, no necessity for taking the two works 
as contradictory. When the term is used in what was called the meta- 
physical and epistemological significations, which usage renders it 
equivalent to mind as the essences or thought attribute, we are outside 
the sphere of psychological and physiological considerations. In this 
case it is nonsense to ask whether the mind or soul sets body in motion. 
In the Ethics, in the section referred to, we are in the metaphysical and 
cognitive sphere, and the statement is compatible with the point of 
view of the Treatise. 

On the customary basis of interpretation, Spinoza's statements 
that the soul of a thing is the idea of a thing, that soul is the idea of 
body, and that the idea of body is mind, are highly confusing. But 
these expressions are in accord with the interpretation presented in 
this essay — in fact, they are just the sort of expressions that would 
naturally follow from his general position and terminological usages. 

We may conclude that Spinoza's psychology is in general like that of 
Hobbes, and that his treatment of the psychological problems involved 
in the notions of body, soul, image, emotion, and idea is not guided by 
influences supposed to emanate from the Cartesian dualism of sub- 
stance. The distinction between image and idea is not a distinction 
that obtains within the psychological field, nor is it Cartesian. The 
latter is a distinction in existence ; the Spinozistic is not even compar- 
able thereto. Indeed, it might conduce to clearness not to speak of 
such a distinction at all. The real point is that ideas, images, sensa- 
tions, perceptions, emotions, as psychological phenomena, are on the 
same footing, and fall within the same field; they are names for 
various activities of the human being, explicable by physiological 
principles. The preferred term for mental process seems to be image. 
But from the point of view of knowledge, the mental process (the 
term now referring to meaning and value) is an idea, a conception. 
In psychological treatment, the nature, origin, and conditions of the 



70 IDEAANDESSENCE 

activity of thinking are in question: in connection with knowledge, 
it is the logical structure and implications of thought that are up for 
elucidation. Body and soul are distinguished in more than one way, 
but the distinctions can not be equated with the Cartesian distinction 
and show little or no sign that the Cartesian doctrine represents their 
source. And, finally, the thesis that Spinoza's parallelism of ideas and 
things is a correspondence of logical entities and actually existing 
things, and not a parallelism of mental or spiritual entities or con- 
scious states with physical changes, seems to have been substantiated. 



V 

In the light of the preceding discussion, it may be illuminating to 
examine the features of Spinoza's system when the assumption is 
made that his work rests upon and expresses the conception of psycho- 
physical parallelism, with its allied conception of psychoneural 
parallelism. In a negative way further support for the thesis of this 
essay may be obtained. Let us, therefore, assume that Spinoza was 
a psychophysical parallelist, and that the attribute of thought denotes 
psychical or spiritual existence, and that the idea is a psychical entity. 
With this as the guiding conception, let us observe what difficulties 
and inconsistencies arise. That is, we shall take the position that the 
Cartesian doctrine of the duality of body and mind, and of substances 
in general, is the basis of Spinoza's work, assuming that as a logical 
consequence the latter is led to the "first formulation of the Law of 
Psychophysical Parallelism." It may then be possible to estimate the 
legitimacy of these assumptions by the degree of consistency and 
harmony within the body of Spinozistic teaching obtained by this 
method. 

The transformation of Spinoza into the great exponent of psycho- 
physical parallelism is a trick of many commentators because their ac- 
counts involve the assumption of the essential continuity of Cartesian 
and Spinozistic doctrines. Toennies ^ affords an illustration. Follow- 
ing the remarks already cited, he goes on to say that "Der Gedanke, 
welcher dort ^ und in folgenden Saetzen ausgefuehrt wird, laesst sich 
auf eine einfache Weise so wiedergeben: Jeder Partikel physischen 
(materiellen, koerperlichen) Daseins entspricht einem Partikel psychi- 
schen (immateriellen, geistigen) Daseins, welcher in Wirklichkeit (oder 
in Gott) mit ihr identisch, oder, was wiederum dasselbe sagt, das Be- 
wusstsein von ihr ist. Wenn wir ein System von physischen Partikeln 
einen Koerper nennen und das entsprechende System von psychischen 
Partikeln einen Geist, so gehoert dieser Geist zu diesem Koerper, ist 

> op. cit., pp. 159-160. 
»Pt. 2, prop. 11. 



SPINOZA 71 

seine Idee oder sein Bewusstsein."^ Now we are contending that this 
misrepresents Spinoza's fundamental meaning. In order to clear up 
the matter, let us pursue the interpretation on a basis similar to this of 
Toennies. We shall then find perplexities whose artificiality suggests 
their origin in misinterpretation, and the irrelevance of that doctrine. 

Construed in these terms, Spinoza's analysis of the psychological 
fact possesses the following features, reading from within outwards: 
(i) the conscious mental psychical state; (2) the physiological process 
correlated therewith; (3) the stimulating extra-organic object (the 
metaphysical mode of the attribute of extension). There is a one to 
one correlation of the mental order with the physical order. Now we 
may inquire: Is the image a psychical fact and, therefore, spiritual? 
If this be the case, how are we to account for the physiological explana- 
tion of the image? Do we find the image to be a hybrid thing, a 
composite of utterly dissimilar elements? Our scheme is incomplete 
if this interpretation of Spinoza's words is to be conscientiously fol- 
lowed out, for there must be a doubling of the psychical series. Since 
we have now made the distinction between idea and image a psycho- 
logical one, the characteristic phrase, "ideas of images," must be 
given a place in the scheme. Therefore, we must find room in the 
psychical order for, (i) ideas, (2) image-parallels; and in the physical 
order for (i) physiological correlates of ideas and images, the differ- 
ence between them being undetermined, and (2) external sources of 
stimulation. Or, finally, leaving the image as purely physiological, 
we have a correlation of three things — idea, physiological image, and 
external object. In the one case there is fourfold correspondence, in 
the other threefold. 

Now if it is pointed out that such a situation is obviously artificial, 
the retort is that this is precisely what is to be indicated. It is clear 
that the more we insist upon foisting upon Spinoza the notion of 
existence as dual, and the incommensurability of the two orders of 
existence, the less simple becomes the status of the image. Peculiari- 
ties in the language of Spinoza heap new difficulties upon those en- 
countered by Descartes. 

If there be any need to illustrate further the puzzles that follow such 
a course of procedure, one might inquire what is to be done with 
Spinoza's "idea ideae" and similar expressions. Without adding more, 
we may conclude that the strict application of the two realms of 
existence theory forces into consideration difficulties that are sus- 
piciously artificial. It is impossible to believe that they are legitimate 
or represent Spinoza. 

One more point remains to be considered. If Spinoza be taken as a 
thorough psychophysical parallelist, the parallelism of the modes 

• cf. p. 170, and second article, p. 335. 



72 IDEAANDESSENCE 

tends to collapse through the elision of the order of extension, as has 
been noted by more than one commentator. For if the idea is a psy- 
chical spiritual entity, the order of extension — the material world — 
can exist for the knowing mind only as a set of spirit entities called 
ideas-of -extension. The incommensurability of thought and extension, 
their coordination without interdependence, encloses knowledge in the 
sphere of ideas and certifies that all that is knowable is the mental 
psychical order. If the element of thought be totally unlike the unit 
in the world of extension, the correspondence of the one with the 
other can not be given as a fact of experience. For experience is, 
according to these principles, psychical or mental experience, and in 
order to experience extension, extension must be mental, and, there- 
fore, must be spiritualized. Which amounts to saying that in order 
for extension to be a factor of experience, it must assume the form of 
non-extended extension, for it must be psychical and spiritual. And 
this is to land in utter contradiction. It literally amounts to the 
assertion that the mind can not know or experience extension without 
imperiling the existence of that extension. The frequent averring by 
commentators that, in the last analysis, Spinoza's doctrine requires 
only thought to exist is an inescapable conclusion, if our philosopher 
was couching his thought in psychophysical terms. The field of the 
physical is excluded from the field of actual experience and knowledge 
since that experience and knowledge are and can be only spiritual, 
and the existences experienced and known only psychical. Accord- 
ingly, to be, and to be conceived, to be actual and to be experienced, 
and, finally, to be in the mind or soul, are only different ways of saying 
to be in consciousness or to be psychical. For being, conception, 
actuality, experience, if they are to mean anything, must stand for 
differentiations in the series of psychical states. 

Had this subjectivistic construction of his thought been the final 
goal of Spinoza's philosophy, we might properly expect him to give 
some explicit recognition of the fact. Or at least we might look for 
him to take some notice of the resultant difficulties and to have en- 
deavored to meet them. But it seems that Spinoza had no inkling 
of such a subjectivistic cul-de-sac. More than once the difficulty has 
been recognized and slurred over by recourse to the assumed peculiar 
fact of the copy-character of ideas of primary qualities as contrasted 
with the lack of such imitative representative character in ideas of 
secondary qualities. There seems to be no sign of Spinoza's awareness 
of such a difficulty and of the availability of the distinction between 
kinds of qualities as a mode of outlet from his blind alley. It is an 
easy step to pass from Spinoza, the psychophysical parallelist, to the 
interpretation of certain passages as standing for a Lockian repre- 
sentative theory of ideas. But the representative function of ideas 



SPINOZA 73 

in Spinoza is very unlike what that function is generally taken to 
mean. Ideas for Spinoza represent things somewhat as the equation 
of a curve stands for the curve, or the law of gravitation for the 
behavior of falling bodies. The correct understanding of Spinoza's 
position simply leaves as irrelevant questions the relation of body and 
soul, of representative idea and thing represented, and allied issues. 
The vexatious question of the status of the image, for example, is 
left to one side. These problems, in so far as they exist in Spinoza 
at all, and in so far as the ordinary formulations of them do not embody 
a misinterpretation, form a part of the general problem of the relation 
of the attributes to substance, and arise according to any account 
whatever of his doctrine. In so far as they depend upon the duality 
of existence, they are totally irrelevant. 

The thesis that is being maintained receives indirect, but substantial, 
support from a study of Spinoza's statements concerning the attribute 
of thought and the question of the relation of the attributes of 
thought and extension to substance. The latter question is the 
central, and most vexatious, problem of his metaphysics. It will 
appear in the sequel that the interpretation that has been advanced 
does not add new complications to the problem; on the other hand, 
while it does not free the issue of all its perplexities, it at least 
clarifies it. 

We may approach the problem through the attribute of thought. 
The point involved may be expressed as follows : Do Spinoza's declara- 
tions concerning the attribute of thought indicate that he regarded 
it as a stream of mental and psychical existents, or as the system of 
logical essences, truths or definitions? 

The infinite attribute of thought is "one of the infinite attributes of 
God, which express God's eternal and infinite essence."^ Now this 
attribute is eternal, for every attribute "expresses the reality or being 
of substance." ^ And every attribute must express the necessity, the 
eternity, and the infinity of substance. The infinite modes of thought 
consist of ideas. It follows that these ideas must be eternal.^ It is 
this eternity, necessity, and infinity of the attributes that is asserted 
in the dictum concerning the order and connection of ideas, and gives 
the idea of substance its rank as the logical, and substance as the causal 
fountain-head of the infinite mode of thought and extension. "What- 
soever follows from the infinite nature of God, for maliter, follows with- 
out exception in the same order and connection from the idea of God 
in God objectively {objective) ""^ Shortly after occurs the following 
illustration: "The nature of a circle is such that if any number of 
straight lines intersect within it, the rectangles formed by their seg- 

* Ethics, Pt. 2, prop. i. 

' ibid, Pt. I, prop. lo, note. 

'ibid. Props, ii, 21. 

^ ibid, Pt. 2, prop. 7, corol. 



I 1 v m mi ■ ■ ■ »'<»»»»^«»<X 



74 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

ments will be equal to one another; thus, infinite equal rectangles are 
contained in a circle. Yet none of these rectangles can be said to 
exist, except in so far as the circle exists; nor can the idea of any of 
these rectangles be said to exist, except in so far as they are compre- 
hended in the idea of the circle." ^ There is, then, implicit in the idea 
of God or substance all the ideas that constitute the modes of thought, 
as the ideas of the infinity of possible rectangles are comprehended in 
the idea of the circle. Furthermore, the idea of the circle is said to 
be "in God." Now everything, which is, follows necessarily from God; 
the processions of things and ideas from God are the explication of 
God's existence and essence through the attributes. And, finally, we 
find that "In God there is necessarily the idea not only of his essence, 
but also of all things which necessarily follow from his essence." We 
can not but conclude that these ideas which follow from the idea of 
God, which form the attribute that expresses the necessity, infinity, 
and eternity of substance or God, and which are in God, must be 
eternal, must be truths. It is impossible to understand how these 
ideas, occupying such a station and possessing such significations 
can be identical with a stream of particular psychical or spiritual 
entities, varying from individual to individual, and having the ephem- 
eral and adventitious character of the individual's experience. Nor 
can we arbitrarily select from the totality of putative psychical pro- 
cesses only the so-called "concepts," and hold that Spinoza's words 
apply to these alone, for emotions, affections, and the rest, have also 
their ideas and are thereby "represented in the attribute of thought." 
The stream of the individual's experiences — ideas, memories, illu- 
sions, pleasures, pains, sensations, and the like — ^whether we regard 
them as psychical or not, can not be equated with the series of ideas 
which express the essence of God, which are in God, and which follow 
from the idea of God, "objectively" and "subjectively." 

Furthermore, it may be observed, if by ideas Spinoza means psychical 
states, that is, if the thought attribute be psychical existence, then the 
ideas are existences. They must, therefore, possess the particularity 
and mutability of the concrete events of experience and of physical 
events or things. But then they can not be eternal. For the concrete 
event or thing as such is not eternal; it is eternal only in so far as it 
is an occurrence in the eternal, necessitated system of nature and, as 
a mode of the extension attribute, in so far forth expresses the essence 
of substance. Thus a given motion, say of my pencil, is not eternal, 
although the concept or idea of motion is. As essence it is eternal, as 
event it is not. But the ideas are said to be eternal. These ideas, 
moreover, omitting all question of their imputed psychical nature, are 
not numerically the equivalents and correlates of the "particular and 

* ibid, prop. 8, note. 



SPINOZA 75 

mutable" things; they are the truths, the laws, the definitions, the 
formulae of these things. The concept of a circle is the idea of any 
circle whatever; the number of possible actual circles is infinite, but 
their idea-correlate is one. And as a logical entity, it is one and the 
same for all minds. 

If the thought attribute means the organized system of logical 
essences or definitions, it forms the body of truths, and as such is 
naturally eternal, necessary, and infinite. The eternity and necessity 
of the idea mean something quite similar to our meaning when assert- 
ing that mathematical principles are eternal truths, or that the laws 
of science are ultimate. And as a given mathematical principle or 
scientific law corresponds to or is the explanation of an indefinite num- 
ber of specific cases or events, so Spinoza's ideas of things are related 
to things. This account, although it may leave some problems un- 
solved, at least represents Spinoza as consistent, and spares him the 
appearance of being oblivious to the obvious difficulties that are occa- 
sioned by the rejected construction. 

In what light does the problem of the relation of attributes and 
substance now appear? What solution to that problem is suggested 
by this interpretation? If the account that has been given is truly 
representative of Spinoza's doctrine, then an answer to the question 
based upon this account should promise a closer approximation to the 
philosopher's solution as he conceived it. 

God is defined as a "being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance 
consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses the eternal 
and infinite essence." ^ The essence of substance necessarily involves 
existence,^^ or "the existence of substance, just as its essence, is an 
eternal truth." " 

The equation, God = Substance = Essence, is the simplest way 
in which the notion of God can be expressed. For "the existence of 
God and his essence are one and the same," and "the same attributes of 
God which explain the eternal essence of God, explain at the same 
time his eternal existence, that is to say, that itself, which constitutes 
God's essence, constitutes at the same time his existence." ^^ In God, 
then, essence and existence reciprocally and necessarily involve each 
other. But with respect to finite things, or modes, this does not 
obtain, for the "essence of things produced by God does not involve 
existence." ^^ In saying that God is substance, we are saying that he 
is infinite essence and necessary existence, while modes of thought, or 
essences, do not necessarily involve existence. 

• Ethics, Pt. I, def. 6. 
^0 ibid, prop. 7. 
*i ibid, prop. 8, note 2. 
*2 ibid, prop. 20. 
*' ibid, prop. 20. 



76 IDEAANDESSENCE 

This difficulty now confronts the inquirer: On the one hand, the 
modes of the attributes are not absolutely the same as God or sub- 
stance, but are different therefrom in some way; on the other hand, 
since the attributes express or explicate substance, they must in 
some sense constitute substance, and be one and the same with it. 
How is this apparent contradiction to be solved? 

The answer seems to be of this nature: God or substance can be 
understood in two (complementary) ways. Firsts as substance or 
essence simply, without accidents ; this is substance or essence, appre- 
hended sub quadam specie aeternitatis ; it is substance as the fountain- 
head, the totality and unity, of all forms or essences, that do or can 
exist; and as this coherent totality it necessarily exists. Thus we 
contemplate substance in its infinity, eternity, necessity, potency, 
and unchangeableness. But, secondly, substance can be conceived 
and apprehended in its explicated form. The attributes represent, 
express, and constitute substance considered as explicated, unfolded, 
and displayed. This unfolding is to be conceived, not as an evolution 
or natural history, but as the logical explication and exhibition of 
substance. With respect to God as essence, this manifestation is a 
logical, timeless procession analogous to the explication of the concept 
of a circle by the deduction of its manifold properties, aspects, and 
implications. It is the "actual being of the idea." And just as the 
deductions from the concept of the circle can be regarded as contained 
within the concept of the circle, so the logical procession of essences 
can be looked upon as comprised within God as essence. This would 
be the first point of view, essence without accidents, or essence as 
unexplicated. With respect to God as essence that necessarily exists ^ 
that is, God as existence, the series of events, or causes, the concrete 
embodiments of essences in existence, which compose the attribute of 
extension, is the explication of that existence in actuality. It is natura 
naturata. 

The first method of contemplating substance reveals substance as 
source and dynamic center. The second discloses substance as result 
and effect. For Spinoza, these are complementary, for substance, or 
reality, is both at once. 

This appears to be the most consistent construction that can be 
placed upon Spinoza's statements. A similar consistency obviously 
can not be attained if the thought attribute is taken as a stream of 
psychical, spiritual, immaterial existents. And reciprocally, the 
consistency of doctrine put upon this basis strongly suggests the 
validity of the construction essayed, and the falsifying character of 
the account based upon what may summarily be called psychophysical 
parallelism. 

And, finally, with regard to the strife between those who uphold the 



SPINOZA 77 

"formallstic" interpretation (taking the attributes as mere modes of 
intellectual apprehension) and those who maintain the view that the 
attributes are real properties of substance, the results of this study 
would favor in the main the second opinion.^* God possesses an infi- 
nite number of attributes, of which thought and extension are two. 
The system of essences, which forms the thought attribute, is a real 
property; it is God as thinking being. As comprehended by us, as 
subjective essences {essentia ohjectiva) contemplated by the under- 
standing, the system of ideas is knowledge of God as thinking and as 
extended being. Whether our knowledge reaches any further, to any 
other attributes of God, would seem to be doubtful. The knowledge 
of God as extended being involves knowledge of existence, of the 
world of nature. Mind, in a very real sense, is just this system of 
concepts. The question of whether thought is objectively valid, of 
how it is possible for understanding to grasp the essences, and similar 
questions, are foreign to Spinoza's universe of discourse. They are 
unwarranted intrusions that follow in the wake of misapprehensions 
and misinterpretations that arise when alien ideas are imagined to be 
the dominating elements of his doctrine. That understanding is 
endowed with powers commensurable with the greatness of its ap- 
pointed task is a conviction that for Spinoza does not stand in need 
of elaborate justification. For the fruits of reason demonstrate its 
competency and dominion. The whole of method is but the liberation 
of understanding and resolute faith in its pronouncements. The pro- 
vince of thought need not be demarcated nor its objective validity 
proved; for after all, the equation of "to be" with "to be conceived" 
is the ultimate presupposition of Spinoza's system. 

** cf. Falckenberg, History of Modern Philosophy, trans, by Armstrong, p. 127, 



CONCLUSION 

The purpose of this essay is to portray the gross misconstructions 
that have been placed upon the work of Hobbes and Spinoza by taking 
as the basis of investigation the psychological standpoint of a later 
day. Such failures to comprehend them as have been touched upon 
in this paper are derived almost exclusively from ascribing to them 
the theory of dual existence, which, explicitly or implicitly, has been 
a characteristic element of latter-day psychological doctrine. The 
perversions of Hobbes's and Spinoza's meaning are specific instances 
of a lack of historical perspective and insight — of a tendency to read 
into beginnings everything that later accrued to a movement. Spinoza 
and Hobbes, whatever may have been their contributions to the 
development of our psychology, were not originators of the movement 
to place it upon the basis of existence as twofold, nor did their teach- 
ings impel psychology in that direction. The notion of existence as 
dual, and of experience as possessing a twofold character corresponding 
to the two disparate realms of existence with which experience is 
concerned, is no longer a philosophical abstraction nor a discovery — it 
is a commonplace of popular speech. With a varying degree of clear- 
ness and precision, it characterizes the greater part of ordinary reflec- 
tion. It is not confined to the lecture-room, but permeates popular 
thought from street-corner conversation to Sunday-school instruction. 
"Mind and matter," "soul and body," "the spiritual and the material," 
and other customarily juxtaposed terms embody this duality of 
existence as a vaguely grasped truism of discourse. Professor Dewey, 
in voicing his suspicion of this condition, remarks that "the student 
of philosophy comes to his philosophical work with a firmly estab- 
lished belief in the existence of two distinct realms of existence, one 
purely physical and the other purely psychical. The belief is estab- 
lished not as speculative, not as a part of, or incident to, the philosophy 
he is about to study, but because he has already studied two sciences. 
For every science at once assumes and guarantees the genuineness 
of its own appropriate subject-matter." ^ 

To lay bare the misapprehensions of the meaning of old systems that 
result from the sway possessed by these notions through their status 
as almost unquestioned commonplaces serves a threefold purpose. 
First of all, it leads to a more correct presentation of the history of the 
systems. And, secondly, it prepares the way for a more adequate 

^ "Psychological Doctrine and Philosophical Teaching," Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and 
Scientific Method, Vol. XI, p. 505. 



CONCLUSION 79 

account of the origin and growth of the ideas that are responsible for 
many of the perplexities that confront the philosopher of the present. 
And, finally, it fosters that mistrust of previous speculation which 
is a healthy manifestation of the philosophy of the day. 

The latter points require some elucidation. In many quarters to-day 
an attitude of suspicion, directed not towards the results, but towards 
the problems and methods, of previous thought, is a noticeable trait. 
We are beginning to doubt the genuineness of the problems which 
have been handed down to us. Instead of asking how much truth 
and enduring value there is in the historical philosophies, the enquirer 
to-day is apt to ask if the problems, or the historical formulations of 
problems, which are delivered to us as the supposed foci of investiga- 
tion, are real and vital. There is a demand for the searching investi- 
gation of the presuppositions of old systems and traditional questions 
rather than for an evaluation of the old solutions and types of solution. 
Instead of taking the attitude that our task is to continue the work of 
our predecessors and to solve the difficulties remaining in their sys- 
tems, we desire to discover whether the problems are legitimate and 
inescapable. Those who suffer from such misgivings concerning the 
persistent problems of philosophy would prefer to find out what the 
problem is rather than seek to improve upon the old answers to 
problems that may have been radically biassed from the start through 
unrecognized presuppositions. The feeling obtains that in accepting 
the issues of previous philosophical inquiry, even if we perceive the 
inadequacy of opinions on the issues, we may be unwittingly admitting, 
as presuppositions, ideas and standpoints that are actually question- 
able in themselves ; or that, while no longer duped by certain theories 
and worn-out dogmas of speculation, we are nevertheless misled by 
their after-effects which, although imperceptible, may be influential. 

The animus of this attitude may be expressed in this way; if the 
historical problem is genuine, human experience at any age will gen- 
erate it, for it will possess certain traits which reflection feels compelled 
to shape into that problem; if, on the contrary, the problems are 
artificial, or stated in an unreal form, they are in so far unauthentic, 
unreal, and irrational. In the latter case, with changed conditions of 
experience, the problem will not be directly generated, but will persist 
as a legacy of history. If the problem be unreal, factors alien to the 
traits of experience under consideration determined its appearance 
and its form. With recognition of the alien character of these factors, 
the validity of the problem is impeached. To endeavor to improve 
upon the previous solution of such a problem is to perpetuate mis- 
directed effort. What is needed is a regenesis of the problem through 
an analysis that is at least freed from the pervasive influence of such 
foreign elements, and a consequent restatement of the issue in a 



80 IDEAANDESSENCE 

form freed from the embarrassments of a mischievous artificiality. 
In short, the historicity of a problem offers no guarantee of its validity, 
and a fresh start, a reexamination of the traits of experience, is required. 

It does not require much reflection upon the situation resulting from 
the belief in two distinct realms of existence to notice that it is one 
calculated to present difficulties. On the whole, it amounts to this, 
that our deliberations rest upon the dual character of experience and 
existence as a presupposition, more or less clearly recognized, and when 
recognized, frequently accepted as valid. "Let a man be persuaded 
as you please that the relation between psychology and philosophy is 
lacking in any peculiar intimacy, and yet let him believe that psychol- 
ogy has for its subject-matter a field antithetical to that of the physical 
science, and his problems are henceforth the problems of adjusting 
the two opposed subject-matters: the problems of how one such 
field can know or be truly known by another, of the bearing of the 
principles of substantiality and causality within and between the 
two fields. Or let him be persuaded that the antithesis is an unreal 
one, and yet let his students come to him with beliefs about conscious- 
ness and internal observation, the existence of sensations, images, and 
emotions as states of pure consciousness, the independence of the 
organs of action in both observation and movement from 'conscious- 
ness' (since the organs are physical) and he will be obliged to discuss 
the type of epistemological and metaphysical problems that inevitably 
follow from such belief.^ "The student of philosophy comes to his 
work having already learned that there is a separate psychic realm; 
that it is composed of its unique entities; that these are connected 
and compounded by their own unique principles, thereby building up 
their own characteristic systematizations ; that the psychic entities 
are by nature in constant flux, transient and transitory, antithetical 
to abiding spatial things; that they are purely private; that they 
are open to internal inspection and to that only; that they constitute 
the whole scope of the 'immediately' given and hence the things that 
are directly — non-inferentially — 'known', and thus supply the sole 
certainties and the grounds of all other beliefs and knowings; that in 
spite of their transient and surface character, these psychic entities 
somehow form the self or ego, which, in turn, is identical with the 
mind or knower. The summary of the whole matter is that with states 
of consciousness and with them alone to be and to appear, to appear 
and to be certain, to be truly known, are equivalents." ^ 

One can not refrain from answering affirmatively Professor Dewey's 
inquiry as to whether these conceptions contain in germ "the substance 
of the questions most acutely discussed in contemporaneous philoso- 

2 ibid, p. 506. 
' ibid, p. 507. 



CONCLUSION 8l 

phy." Hesitancy in accepting the questions as genuine and real nat- 
urally follows. Unless the duality of existence, which, as a presuppo- 
sition, activates and directs so much of our thought, is above question, 
little reliance can be placed upon problems formulated within the 
limits of that conception. Professor Creighton seems to have had 
this in mind in the admirable paper in which he considers the question 
of the possibility of an existential science of psychology.^ 

A study of the origin and growth of these conceptions, and of their 
influence upon the character of modern philosophy and psychology, 
should place the epistemological questions of present-day discussion 
in a clearer light; and if it so happens that these problems are per- 
vaded by a vicious artificiality, the recognition of the fact would facili- 
tate the presentation of the real issue. 

The origin of this division of reality into two realms lies, in the 
first instance, in the Cartesian conception of the dualism of sub- 
stances.^ The roots of the doctrine lie, of course, still further back. 
The notion of immaterial substance becomes clearly defined in scholas- 
ticism, and the distinction between matter and form gradually crys- 
tallizes into a contrast of spirituality and immateriality to materiality 
and extension. At the same time, the conception of a plurality of 
substances, hierarchically arranged from relatively formless matter 
to form that is pure and free from matter, tends to telescope into a 
dualism of mind and matter substances. With Descartes the move- 
ment is completed. 

This, however, is but one of the factors in the genesis of these con- 
ceptions. There is another doctrine, characteristic of scholasticism, 
which converges toward the two-substance doctrine and finally be- 
comes interlaced with it. This is the orthodox epistemological tenet 
of the cognitive correspondence of idea and thing. The various forms 
of this theory are at bottom similar in that they look upon the idea 
as in some sense a copy, a photographic duplication, or imitative 
representation of the object. To the scholastics, knowledge is the 
correspondence of forms actualized in intra-organic potentiality and 
forms actualized in extra-organic matter or potentiality. So long as 
the notion of a graded hierarchy of substances persists, the corre- 
spondence is of one hierarchical arrangement to another hierarchical 
arrangement. Substances were qualitatively distinct things, ordered 
serially, beginning with the actual things of the perceptual world, 
and passing through persons and angels to culminate finally with God 
or pure form. But through various movements of thought, which 

* "The Standpoint of Psychology," Philosophical Review, Vol. 23, No. 2. 

5 The following is a brief statement of the thesis maintained by the writer in an essay originally in- 
tended as' a dissertation for the doctorate. At the suggestion of Professor Dewey, only those portions 
of that essay dealing with Hobbes and Spinoza are submitted as a thesis. The theme of the original 
essay is stated here in order to make clear the general setting of the discussion of Hobbes and 
Spinoza. 



82 IDEAANDESSENCE 

can not be enumerated at this place, the hierarchy is broken up. In 
the place of a scale of actualities, the several ranks collapse to compose 
two groups. The process of change consists of two moments. On the 
one hand, human beings, in so far as they are thinking beings (spiritual 
beings, possessed of a soul), and angels are excluded from the world 
of nature ("nature" as it appeared to a Galileo), and are no longer 
regarded as in serial continuity therewith. The assemblage of souls, 
angels, spiritual forces, and even the Deity, come to form one substan- 
tial realm. On the other hand, and coincidently, the world of nature 
as the assemblage of things loses its qualitative subordination of 
lower to higher, and in the place of qualitative heterogeneity acquires 
quantitative homogeneity; it accordingly reduces to one realm of 
existence. AH existents, that is, gravitate toward one of two extremes, 
while the extremes finally settle down into two spheres not contrasted 
as contraries, but opposed as contradictories. And in an accordant 
fashion, with less radical thoroughness, that part of the scale contain- 
ing minds, angels, and God falls into a substantial continuity approxi- 
mating the continuity in a quantitative system of nature. The 
hierarchy of substances is thus concentrated into two substances, and 
this position comes to be taken over by succeeding speculation in 
many cases almost without question. 

This condensation defines two realms of substantial existence, and 
coincidently formal, final, and efficient causes become divorced, the 
formal and final causes being applicable, if at all, only in the world of 
spiritual substance, while in the world of matter-substance efficient 
causes alone are operative. Mind and things, knower and known, per- 
sonality and the world of nature, the soul and the body, idea and 
thing, fall into such sharp contrast as finally to assume the shape of 
just so many antitheses. For a long time after the inception of modern 
philosophy the reciprocal affecting of the two substances was insisted 
upon or postulated as necessary. Somewhat grudgingly such inter- 
action came to be recognized as a mystery defying explanation, finally 
to be called by many impossible and inconceivable. 

The theory of the cognitive correspondence of species or idea and 
thing persists alongside of the process of reducing a plurality of sub- 
stances to two. But the result is the arising of many epistemological 
perplexities. The situation, in brief outline, is this: knowing goes 
on in a substantial world, which, by definition, is so unlike the world 
of the known as to be in sharp opposition thereto, and even antithetical 
to the assemblage of things known. But knower and known, being 
in such opposition, the possibility of this cognitive correspondence is 
itself in question, and yields the first problem of epistemology. The 
recognition of this situation appears only gradually, as is to be ex- 
pected. The more keenly, however, the opposition of substances is 



CONCLUSION 83 

realized, the more problematic becomes the correspondence of idea 
to object. 

For psychology, the problem is that of the relation of ideas in a 
realm of spiritual immaterial substance to correspondent things in an 
extended material substance. With development of the appreciation 
of the antithesis of the two substances and the parallel growth of 
doubt concerning the interaction of those substances, the problem 
becomes acute. A bold science of nature, measuring everything, shov- 
ing all qualities into the soul as the easiest method of ridding a quanti- 
tative world of them, and intent upon atoms and molecules, sets for 
psychology a pretty problem. Bidding psychology become "scientific," 
it offers psychology its instruments of investigation — but at the same 
time bids it investigate those qualitative phenomena with respect to 
which this science of nature asserts by implication the unavailability 
of its instruments. When attention is directed to the physiological 
process in perception, the relation of thought to things is transmuted 
into the relation of a mental psychical state to a physiological process 
in the nervous system which natural science has incorporated into its 
own world of investigation. The advance of knowledge concerning 
the world of matter does not abate the exigencies of the situation, but 
rather accentuates its difficulties. There are two worlds of existents 
defined by opposition to one another. Psychology in some queer 
fashion is a science of both, with the task of relating the two assigned 
it. Psychology must concern itself with both fields, straddling the 
gap between like a colossus. In short, it has the unwelcome task of 
relating two spheres that from the outset are declared in effect to be 
unrelatable. Approaching the spiritual from the side of the physical, 
with the methods and devices of that field, it runs the danger of falsi- 
fying its subject-matter. Approaching the physical from the side of 
the spiritual, its work seems perverse, unverifiable, and capricious. 
Rejecting the problem of the ultimate nature of either substance, and 
in particular that of the soul, as metaphysical and beyond its province, 
and giving more and more attention to investigations of correspon- 
dences of material changes in the sphere of stimuli and nervous 
processes, to the conscious experience, its subject-matter assumes the 
form of two series of phenomena, one series physical, material, and 
physiological, the other psychical, mental, and spiritual. The oppo- 
sition of two substances is undiminished in the opposition of the two 
series. With the surrender of the problem of the relation of the two 
substances, the same problem with respect to the two series must also 
be surrendered. Psychology, in effect, proceeds on the conception of 
the parallelism of the series; its problem is the determination of the 
correspondences; and its postulate, its heuristic principle, only too 
often taken as an established theory of explanation, is, in narrow 



84 IDEA AND ESSENCE 

form, psychophysical parallelism. And even the school of interaction- 
ists, lineal descendants of those who insisted upon the mystery of 
inter-substantial action, do not so much deny the parallelism of the 
two existential series, as insist upon their unprovable, but metaphysi- 
cally and scientifically necessary, reciprocal influence. And the 
struggle between parallelists and interactionists leads back again to 
conflicting metaphysical systems. 

For epistemology, having recourse to this psychology at every stage 
of its development, psychological principles aggravate the acerbity 
of its problems. For the correspondence theory of knowledge, in its 
varying guises, is prejudiced by the psychology to which it appeals, 
and for which it is itself largely responsible. The more radically unlike 
the series of ideas and the series of events in nature, the more irrational 
becomes the assertion of a cognitive correspondence. Yet, be it noted, 
just because of this incommensurability of the two series, all that can 
be asserted is just some form of this inexplicable correspondence. 
Knowing, broken up into a series of ideas, is ruled out of a world of 
nature to which that knowing refers, and nature is paradoxically 
regarded as known by thoughts that are wholly beyond, and dis- 
connected from, nature. The correspondence being in no wise im- 
peached, it must be taken for granted or asserted as an ineluctable 
mystery, or, finally, retained in part and disguised through the device 
of ideas of primary qualities. Still more radical measures may be 
taken, and the world of the other substance becomes a vanishing point. 
We must act as if it existed, but there is no hope of proving it. With 
the evanescing of that world, knowledge and the knowing-process 
reduces to a concern of the mental world, in truth a "bloodless ballet" 
of ideas. The laws of knowing are laws of the combinations of ideas, 
discoverable in the series of ideas. But since to be in and of spiritual 
substance comes to mean to be in and of the mind ; and to be mental 
and psychical comes to mean to be in consciousness, knower, know- 
ing, and the known are all literally in consciousness and nowhere else. 
To pass from mental substance, from mind, from consciousness, or, 
finally, from the ideas of consciousness, to an extra-mental world is, 
in terms of the presuppositions, an impossible feat. Like Baron 
Miinchhausen's feat of lifting himself by tugging at his boot-straps, it 
involves a denial of the conditions in which alone the endeavor can 
succeed. 

Metaphysically, the readiest outlet is a frank and peremptory 
repudiation of one or the other substance or of one or the other series. 
The history of the two-substance doctrine shows that such an unmiti- 
gated dualism will content no one. But the customary fashion of get- 
ting rid of it is first to accept it, then to deny it, and, finally, to rein- 
troduce it in a disguised form. The assumption is made that one of the 



CONCLUSION 85 

two substances alone exists, although it is defined only by reference to 
the other and supposedly non-existent substance, and a spiritualistic or 
materialistic metaphysics results. Or failing so radical an extirpation 
of one substance, both substances, losing their substantiality, may be 
conceived as "appearances" or "aspects" of one really real substance. 
Finally, a still different course may be followed, and one substance be 
related to the other as appearance to reality, phenomenal being to 
noumenal. Psychology is put upon these various metaphysical bases, 
at one time "materialistic," at another concerned with "epiphenomena," 
or else settling comfortably upon a spiritualistic metaphysics. But in 
any case, the sciences of physical nature remain and are a persistent 
challenge to psychology. 

The results are many, but all involve in some fashion the after- 
effects of a metaphysical theory of a dualism of substances. The pres- 
ent dissatisfaction with psychology among psychologists and episte- 
mologists seems to derive its animus from an increasing recognition of 
this metaphysics that has for so long functioned as a determining pre- 
supposition of the science. The notion of the two realms of experience 
and existence is the point fundamentally involved in the prevailing 
dissatisfaction with existential psychology in general,® and its availa- 
bility as a propaedeutic for epistemology. Professor Dewey, in the 
article already quoted, points out that "in so far as there are grounds 
for thinking that the traditional presuppositions of psychology were 
wished upon it by philosophy when it was yet too immature to defend 
itself, a philosopher is within his own jurisdiction in submitting them 
to critical examination." ^ "The prospects for success in such a 
critical undertaking are increased ... by the present situation 
within the science of psychology as that is actually carried on. . . 
If one went over the full output of the laboratories of the last five 
years, how much of that output would seem to call, on its own behalf 
and in its own specific terms, for formulation in the Cartesian-Lockian 
terms?" ^ 

The situation as outlined by Professor Dewey has an important 
retroactive effect upon the interpretation of the history of philosophy, 
as the preceding essay has indicated. One outcome of the develop- 
ment of psychology is that so many of the terms of psychology and 
epistemology, such as sensation, idea, mind, soul, spirit, will, intelli- 
gence, consciousness, personality, and the like have acquired connota- 
tions that relate them to the spiritual substance side of the duality. 
The image may be selected as illustrating the fluctuations of termino- 
logical meaning, particularly as it is in the early stages of modern 
psychology so far removed from the psychical. The image has hov- 

« cj. Creighton, op. cii. 
'' op. cit., p. 508. 
• ibid. 



86 IDEAANDESSENCE 

ered between the two spheres without settHng down unequivocally 
in either realm. Although it rather stubbornly resists being placed in 
the psychical realm, it has nevertheless acquired a connotation that 
implies such a status; it is treated in a psychical context. With 
greater or less clearness, such terms are construed as referring to a 
psychical principle or its states. As Professor Dewey has asserted, 
this connotation is not merely sensed by the technical student, but 
it is almost a dogma of popular usage, and familiarity has engendered 
implicit credence in the reality of that which the terms connote. 

It has been asserted that the theory of a duality of substances, com- 
bined with the theory of the cognitive correspondence of idea and 
thing, were the chief factors in splitting existence into psychical and 
physical spheres and in developing the doctrine of psychophysical 
parallelism. But then Hobbes and Spinoza, each of whom insisted 
upon the oneness of substance, would be expected to afford a crucial 
test of the truth of the assertion. A study of them should reveal, by 
contrast, what does not happen when psychological and epistemological 
investigations are not founded upon a platform of a duality of sub- 
stance, nor carried on in the interests of such a position. In short, 
if it is the notion of a spiritual thinking substance that turns idea, 
concept, and even sensation and perception, into mental, spiritual 
states of a soul or mind, then investigation might be expected to dis- 
close that in Hobbes and Spinoza there were no "mental psychical 
states" properly so called. To neither philosopher did the term idea, 
much less sensation, perception, and image imply an entity in, or a 
state and manifestation of, an immaterial - thinking substance. His- 
torians and commentators have found just such meanings in the work 
of Hobbes and Spinoza; but their discoveries were possible only 
because of a preliminary assumption, indubitably to a large extent 
unrealized, that these meanings were there to;be disclosed. We have 
seen, however, that Hobbes and Spinoza really stand aloof from the 
movement which leads from the dualism of substances to the doctrine 
of psychical existence, and the 'final identification of the psychical, 
the mental, the conscious, and knowing. It is the unfortunate attitude 
of assuming their organic involution in this current of development 
% that eventuates in the many artificial perplexities which appear to 

impede adequate interpretation of their work, and results in a mis- 
representation of their qualities of insight and spirit. 



VITA 

Albert George Adam Balz was born at Charlottesville, Virginia, 
January 3, 1887. He attended the University of Virginia, 1905-1912; 
Columbia University, 1 91 2-1 91 3. Previous degrees : B. A., University 
of Virginia, 1908; M.A., University of Virginia, 1909. Positions held: 
Instructor in Philosophy and Psychology, University of Virginia, 
1910-1912; University Fellow in Philosophy, Columbia University, 
1912-1913; Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, 
1 91 3-1 91 6. Since 191 6, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University 
of Virginia. 




X' 1 1-^-' -'^'^ 



'&mMmmmmMSfi^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





020 207 222 7 I 






-14 C"*^^, 






V'/ ' .' , • ■.- < 



